FGDL vs IAUM

FGDLBFranklin Responsibly Sourced Gold ETF

IAUMAiShares Gold Trust Micro

In short

FGDL Gold in a vault, with two twists: the bars come with Franklin's responsible-sourcing label, and the fund charges nothing to hold them. Assets are bullion and cash, full stop.

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

FGDL The Fund seeks to track the price of gold bullion, after deducting expenses. Its assets consist only of gold bullion and cash, if any.

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

Why people hold it

• FGDL A 0.00% expense ratio in a cohort whose median is 0.17%. Even the cheap giants charge something (GLDM 0.10%, IAUM 0.09%, GLD 0.40%).
• Simple plumbing: a grantor trust that holds gold bullion and cash and tracks the metal's price after expenses. No futures, no swaps, no miners.
• The responsible-sourcing standard is the pitch in a group where every fund owns the same metal, and Franklin spells it out in the trust's own filings.
• Does what it says: mandate, wrapper and holdings all line up, and it sits in the upper half of the physical gold cohort.

• 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

• FGDL Thinly traded next to the category's heavyweights, which can mean wider bid/ask spreads on the way in and out.
• Bullion pays no income, and the fund makes no distributions. The gold price, less costs, is the whole story.
• Launched in 2022 and far smaller than the decade-old gold trusts, so the track record is short by cohort standards.

• 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 FGDL profile⁠

Full IAUM profile⁠