Hi J, Re: Gold surrogate....................... It appears that IAU and GLD are essentially twins: https://stockcharts.com/freecharts/perf.php?gld,iau The one with the lowest annual expense ratio would be best since there's no yield on these ETFs. Here's the last five years of my IAU ownership. It was a rather flat period of price movement for gold. investorshub.advfn.com/uimage/uploads/2020/1/6/sktrziaulb.gif OAG Tom