Year-to-date, the SPDR Gold Trust (GLD) has outperformed the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by a margin of about 20,000 basis points. Over the last month of trading, however, GLD has lagged behind SPY, the funds gaining around -4% and +6%, respectively [see GLD Returns].
From a fundamental perspective, this divergence in short-term performance could suggest that investors have in fact regained some confidence and have gradually begun to re-allocate assets to riskier corners of the market [consider Three Alternate Safe Haven Currency ETFs].
One piece of evidence that goes against this hypothesis, however, is that U.S. Treasury funds, like TLT and IEF, have also worked their way higher alongside rising stocks.
In fact, these ETFs have even better held their ground during gold’s recent slump, perhaps suggesting that investors aren’t quite convinced of the recent rallies in equity markets given the consistently worse-than-expected economic data dominating Wall Street [consider the new Simple (But Effective) Safe Haven ETFdb Model Portfolio].