Gold traded at $4,702 an ounce at 8:55 a.m. Eastern Time on April 27, 2026, leaving the metal $2 higher than the day before and more than $1,358 above its level a year earlier. The move kept gold near a record run that has turned the price into a daily reference point for investors watching whether the metal can still do the job they want from it.
James Taska said there is a great debate over whether paper gold is as useful as the physical, but he added that from a financial advisor’s viewpoint it is much easier to rebalance a client’s gold allocation when it is held as an exchange-traded fund. He also said the spread when trying to buy or sell gold can be quite variable and wide. In market terms, the bid is what a seller can get and the ask is what a buyer pays, with bid prices always below ask prices; the smaller that gap, the more liquid the market tends to be.
That liquidity question matters because gold is often used as a steadying force in a portfolio when markets turn volatile, even if it is not always a strong short-term or long-term investment compared with stocks in a strong economy. The article’s framing also points to gold as an asset that is not tied directly to the variance of inflation, which is part of why some investors keep it alongside equities rather than in place of them. Physical gold can be bought as bars, coins or jewelry, but ETFs have become a common way to trade it.
The long view shows why the debate remains unsettled. From 1971 to 2024, the stock market delivered average annual returns of 10.7%, while gold returned 7.9% on average, a gap that underscores why gold is often treated less as a growth engine than as a portfolio ballast. The current price near $4,702 does not settle that argument; it sharpens it, because the metal is expensive enough now that how it is owned may matter as much as the direction it moves.
For investors, the bigger question today is not whether gold is rising. It is whether they want exposure to the price itself or to the practical advantages and compromises that come with ETFs, physical holdings and the spread between buying and selling.
