Gold vs stocks calculator
Set both price-growth sliders to the same number. Shares still finish ahead — and the reason is the whole difference between the two.
After 25 years
In today’s money — stocks$81,772
In today’s money — gold$36,754
With identical price growth, shares still end $94,258 ahead. Nothing about the price did that — it is the 3% of reinvested earnings, which gold has no version of.
Gold’s entire return has to come from price. A business can pay you while you wait.
Both growth rates are your assumptions — this page does not claim what either asset has returned, and past figures would not predict the next thirty years anyway. It assumes steady growth, ignores taxes, and does not model volatility or the fact that the two often fall at different times, which is the main argument for holding some of each.
One produces cash. One does not.
A share is a claim on a business that earns money. Those earnings are real whether or not anyone wants to buy your share this year, and reinvested they compound on top of whatever the price does.
Gold earns nothing. An ounce of gold today is an ounce of gold in thirty years. Every dollar of return has to come from someone paying more for it later.
That is not a criticism, it is a description — and it is why the calculator holds price growth equal. Even then shares pull ahead, purely on the cash flow. Gold has no version of that line.
Gold has a cost, not a yield
The asymmetry goes further. Holding physical gold costs something — storage, insurance, or the expense ratio of a fund that holds it for you. So gold does not merely fail to pay you; it charges a small amount for the privilege of waiting.
Small, but it compounds against you in exactly the way returns compound for you.
The argument for gold that actually holds
None of this makes gold pointless. The honest case for it never rested on out-earning businesses:
- It behaves differently. Gold and shares do not always fall together, and an asset that moves on its own schedule can steady a portfolio even if it returns less on average.
- No counterparty. Gold does not depend on a company staying solvent or a government honoring a promise. In scenarios where those assumptions break, that independence is the entire point.
- It is nobody’s liability. Which is why it attracts interest during currency and confidence crises.
These are arguments for holding some as insurance. Insurance is not supposed to be your best-returning asset — if it were, it would not be insurance.
How to read any gold pitch
Almost every case made for gold rests on a prediction: that its price will rise, usually because something bad will happen. That may prove right. But notice it is a forecast, not a mechanism.
The case for owning productive assets does not require a forecast. Businesses earn money and hand some of it over. You can be wrong about the price and still be paid.
What this calculator does not claim
It asserts nothing about what either asset has returned historically, which is why both growth rates are yours to set. It assumes steady growth, ignores taxes, and does not model volatility — including the long stretches where gold has gone nowhere and the long stretches where shares have fallen hard.
Related: gold earns nothing, and that is the whole argument
Educational only. This explains how these products and accounts work in general. It is not financial, tax, or legal advice, and not a recommendation to buy anything. Your situation is specific to you — check with a licensed professional before acting.