AAAU vs GLDM

AAAUBGoldman Sachs Physical Gold ETF

GLDMASPDR Gold MiniShares Trust

In short

AAAU Goldman's bullion box. AAAU holds physical gold and its shares are built to reflect the metal's price minus a 0.18% fee. No manager, no strategy, no index games. Open since 2018 and now a multi-billion-dollar trust.

GLDM The house that built the original gold ETF later built a cheaper one. GLDM holds physical gold bullion, charges 0.10% a year (a quarter of its older sibling's fee), and has grown into a multi-billion-dollar fund.

Stated mandate

AAAU The Shares are designed to reflect the price of gold, less the Trust’s operating expenses. The Trust is not actively managed.

GLDM GLDM seeks to reflect the performance of gold bullion, less the fund's expenses.

Why people hold it

• AAAU One job, plainly done: the trust holds physical gold and its shares are designed to reflect gold's price less operating expenses. Not actively managed.
• A multi-billion-dollar, actively traded fund, the kind of scale and turnover that helps keep the share price tethered to the bullion behind it.
• Trading since 2018 with Goldman Sachs as sponsor: an established wrapper, not a recent launch hoping to gather assets.

• GLDM Ten basis points a year for bullion exposure, below the typical fee among physical gold funds and a quarter of the 0.40% on GLD, the sponsor's original gold trust.
• Simple plumbing: a grantor trust that holds metal and seeks to reflect gold bullion less expenses. No futures roll, no swap counterparty, no miner-stock beta in the way.
• One of the strongest implementations in its peer group, and among the more actively traded gold funds, which tends to keep the spread you pay getting in and out modest.
• Launched in 2018 as the low-fee sibling to the 2004 original, it is now a large, established trust rather than a niche launch hoping to find an audience.

Worth knowing

• AAAU Not the cheapest bullion on the shelf. GLDM and IAUM charge roughly a tenth of a percent and FGDL runs at zero, against 0.18% here.
• No income here. The trust has paid no distributions, so the entire result rides on the metal's price.
• Expenses come off the top: shares reflect gold's price less the trust's costs, a small ongoing drag that compounds the longer you hold.

• GLDM Gold pays nothing. No dividends, no interest, and the trust covers its expenses out of the metal, so gold per share drifts down over time.
• One metal, one price. This is undiversified exposure to bullion, and gold can swing hard in both directions.
• A couple of rivals list lower headline fees (IAUM at 0.09%, FGDL at 0.00%) for similar physical gold exposure.

Full AAAU profile⁠

Full GLDM profile⁠