BAR vs IAUM

BARBGraniteShares Gold Trust

IAUMAiShares Gold Trust Micro

In short

BAR Real bars in a London vault, listed one by one on the sponsor's site every day. BAR landed in 2017 as the boutique fee-fighter among gold trusts: no lending, no derivatives, a 0.17% sponsor fee.

IAUM Bullion in a vault, at 0.09% a year, roughly half the typical fee among physical gold funds. This is iShares' small-fee take on owning metal, priced off the LBMA Gold Price benchmark.

Stated mandate

BAR The Trust seeks to have each Share’s value reflect the value of its gold assets after accrued expenses and liabilities, providing a simple way to invest similarly to gold.

IAUM The Trust seeks to reflect the performance of gold, before its expenses and liabilities, by holding physical gold.

Why people hold it

• BAR Bullion only: the gold sits in ICBC Standard Bank's London vault, lending of the metal isn't permitted, and the trust can't hold derivatives.graniteshares.comsec.gov
• You can check the claim: the bar list is published daily, and outside inspector Bureau Veritas visits the vault twice a year, one of those visits at random.graniteshares.comgraniteshares.com 2
• Plain passive plumbing: mirror the LBMA Gold Price PM less expenses. It has hugged that gold benchmark very tightly.

• IAUM Fee is 0.09% a year against a 0.17% median for physical gold peers, a hair under GLDM (0.10%) and well under SGOL (0.17%) and AAAU (0.18%).
• Plain plumbing: a grantor trust that holds physical gold and seeks to reflect gold's performance, before expenses and liabilities, against the LBMA Gold Price.ishares.com
• A multi-billion-dollar fund that trades actively, and it tracks its gold benchmark about as closely as anything in the physical gold group.

Worth knowing

• BAR No income here. Gold pays nothing, and the trust sells a sliver of its bullion to cover expenses, so the ounces behind each share drift down over time.graniteshares.com
• Cheaper doors to the same metal exist: GLDM and IAUM both undercut BAR's fee, and BAR is only moderately traded next to the category's volume leaders.
• Tax quirk of the wrapper: under current law, long-term gains on gold held through the trust are taxed as collectibles, at a maximum 28% rate.sec.gov

• IAUM No income here. The trust has made no distributions, so return is gold's price move minus the fee, nothing else.
• Gold swings hard on sentiment and rates, and there is no yield to cushion a drawdown.
• Launched in 2021, it is younger than the bullion trusts that anchor this category and not the deepest-traded name among them.

Full BAR profile⁠

Full IAUM profile⁠