FGDL vs SGOL

FGDLBFranklin Responsibly Sourced Gold ETF

SGOLBabrdn Physical Gold Shares ETF

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.

SGOL A 2009-vintage trust that owns actual gold bars and does exactly one job: track bullion's price after a 0.17% fee. Middle of the pack on cost, front of the pack on doing what the prospectus says.

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.

SGOL The Trust seeks to track the price of physical gold bullion, after deducting its expenses.

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.

• SGOL Plain plumbing: a grantor trust holding physical bullion, with one job written into its own documents, to track the price of gold after deducting expenses.
• Tracks the metal about as closely as the wrapper allows, one of the cleanest mandate implementations among physical gold funds.
• Trading since 2009, through several full gold cycles, and now a multi-billion-dollar fund that changes hands actively.

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.

• SGOL Cost sits at the category median: 0.17% a year, while IAUM (0.09%) and GLDM (0.10%) charge less to hold the same metal.
• Bullion throws off no income. This is a price-of-gold holding, not a cash-flow one, and the fee comes out of trust assets.
• One metal, no diversification. The shares go where gold goes, including the long flat stretches and sharp drawdowns.

Full FGDL profile⁠

Full SGOL profile⁠