Gold and silver, over the long run
Prices move year to year. The trend line is what matters for a retirement account or a long-term hold.
A quarter-century of appreciation, with real volatility along the way
Gold has averaged roughly 10.9% in annual price appreciation from 2000 through 2025, or about 6.7% a year after adjusting for inflation. That average masks real swings: gold gained more than 25% in some individual years, like 2007, 2010, and 2024, and it also went through a multi-year decline after its 2013 peak. Gold rewards investors who hold through those swings rather than trying to time them.
More volatile, with a similar long-run direction
Silver has returned roughly 6.7% a year on an annualized basis since 2007, but its year-to-year swings are typically larger than gold's in both directions. That volatility is part of why we generally position silver as a complement to a gold allocation, not a replacement for it.
Neither metal depends on a company's earnings or a government's credit
Stocks and bonds are claims on someone else's performance. Physical gold and silver are not. That's what makes them a useful counterweight to paper assets, particularly inside a retirement account that would otherwise be entirely dependent on the stock market.
Gold doesn't track inflation month to month. Its scarcity is why it holds up over decades.
Gold's price doesn't move in lockstep with the Consumer Price Index, and there's no guarantee it outperforms inflation over any specific period. What gold does have is fixed physical scarcity: no government or central bank can create more of it the way currency supply can expand through monetary policy. Over the long run, that scarcity is why gold has preserved purchasing power across currencies that have been devalued, replaced, or discontinued entirely, even while its price fluctuates year to year.
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