Gold’s price skyrocketed 65% in 2025. During periods of growth like that, it’s easy to wish you had bought the precious metal earlier.
But owning gold can add significant advantages to your portfolio even when the price isn’t soaring, especially for investors nearing retirement. Here’s what you should know about the hidden perks of owning gold.
The benefits of owning gold in your 60s
Young investors can opt for more risky investments like stocks, since they have the time to wait out market downturns and won’t need to sell assets when prices are down to cover their expenses in retirement. But if you’re in your 60s and nearing retirement when your portfolio drops, you don’t have as long a time horizon to recover. Those market drops can result in emotional trading decisions, such as keeping cash on the sidelines or buying high and selling low.
Owning some gold can help mitigate this risk. Gold is often considered a safe haven during market turmoil, since it’s a reliable store of value and tends to behave differently from stocks. Research from State Street Investment Management found that gold provides competitive returns while having a low correlation to traditional financial assets like stocks and bonds. The researchers found that gold often outperforms relative to U.S. equities during market drawdowns. For example, gold gained 12% during the 2008 financial crisis, while U.S. equities were down 47.3%.
Gold can also serve as an inflation hedge. Inflation reduces your purchasing power, and can eat away at your returns from the stock market. But gold tends to retain its value even during times of high inflation, and can even see its price rise as investors flee the stock market and flock to gold.
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How to buy gold
Like with any asset, you don’t want to add too much gold to your portfolio. However, getting some exposure to the precious metal can allow for more diversification. Many experts suggest having no more than 5% to 10% of your portfolio allocated to gold. You can invest at regular intervals — a strategy called dollar-cost averaging — to reach that allocation.
Buying physical gold is an option, though it can be complicated and requires you to consider storage and insurance costs. Gold exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are another way to get exposure, and buying shares of these funds can be as simple as buying stocks and bonds.
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Focus on the long term
Flat gold prices aren’t necessarily a bad thing. Instead, see them as an opportunity to accumulate gold so you are ready for the next rally.
But remember that gold prices can be volatile in the short term. If you’re considering gold, you shouldn’t look at it as a short-term investment. Instead, check that it makes sense with your long-term investment plan.
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