By Trevor Jennewine, The Motley Fool
Publication Date: 2026-01-30 09:32:00
The SPDR Gold Shares ETF has crushed Bitcoin, Nvidia, and the entire S&P 500 this year.
The SPDR Gold Shares ETF (GLD +0.27%) has increased 25% year to date, putting it ahead of Palantir Technologies (down 12%) and Nvidia (up 3%). More impressive, the gold fund outperformed both artificial intelligence stocks by at least 50 percentage points over the last six months.
Meanwhile, the SPDR Gold Shares ETF has also outperformed the S&P 500 (^GSPC 0.13%) by 23 percentage points year to date and 52 percentage points over the last six months. Two hedge fund billionaires (both with excellent track records) positioned their portfolios to benefit in the third quarter.
- Israel Englander of Millennium Management added 104,900 shares of the SPDR Gold Shares ETF. The gold fund represented less than 1% of his portfolio as of September 2025.
- Ken Griffin of Citadel Advisors added 255,100 shares of the SPDR Gold Shares ETF. He also bought call options on the gold fund, and they were his fourth-largest holding as of September 2025.
Millennium and Citadel outperformed the S&P 500 over the last three years, and they rank among the five most successful hedge funds in history as measured by net gains, according to LCH Investments. That makes Englander and Griffin good sources of inspiration.
Are gold funds (like the SPDR Gold Shares ETF) still worth buying?
Image source: Getty Images.
The SPDR Gold Shares ETF tracks the price of gold
The SPDR Gold Shares ETF is an exchange-traded fund run by…
