IAU vs IAUM

IAUBiShares Gold Trust

IAUMAiShares Gold Trust Micro

In short

IAU Gold bars in a London vault, wrapped in a ticker since 2005. IAU is the veteran heavyweight of physical gold funds: bullion held by a custodian bank, priced off the London gold benchmark, tradable all day.

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

IAU The Trust seeks to reflect the price of gold bullion, after accounting for its expenses and liabilities. It provides exposure to physical gold.

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

Why people hold it

• IAU A twenty-year paper trail. Launched in 2005, with bullion held by JPMorgan Chase Bank's London branch and two decades of SEC filings anyone can read.sec.gov
• No futures, no swaps, no roll mechanics. Each share is a fractional undivided interest in gold the trust actually holds, marked to the LBMA gold price.sec.gov
• Costs less than the original US gold ETF: 0.25% a year against GLD's 0.40%. It's also one of the most actively traded funds in the physical gold group.
• Simple mandate, cleanly executed: the trust aims to reflect the gold price minus its expenses, and it has tracked that job about as closely as the structure allows.

• 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

• IAU Fees sit above the cohort median (0.25% vs 0.17%). iShares sells a micro version of the same exposure, IAUM, at 0.09%, and GLDM charges 0.10%.
• The trust earns no income, so it sells gold to pay the sponsor's fee. The gold behind each share declines over time, and shareholders get no distributions.sec.gov
• Tax wrinkle: gains on a trust holding gold are treated as collectibles gains, which can carry a higher top long-term rate than most stock gains.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 IAU profile⁠

Full IAUM profile⁠