Unlike a stock or bond, gold produces no income – no dividend, no interest, no earnings. Its entire potential return comes from price appreciation, which is a meaningfully different risk/return profile than an income-producing asset.

Gold also carries no counterparty risk in the sense that a bond or bank deposit does: owning physical gold doesn’t depend on another party (a company or government) meeting an obligation to pay you back. That’s distinct from the custodian risk in a Gold IRA specifically, where you’re relying on a custodian and depository to properly store and account for your metal.

Inside a retirement account, gold also comes with rules a typical brokerage IRA holding doesn’t: IRC Section 408(m) requires IRA-held gold to meet a 99.5% purity standard and be held by an IRS-approved custodian in an approved depository – the account owner can’t take personal possession while it’s inside the IRA.