Precious Metals Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs) offer investors a convenient channel for investing in precious metals. These funds typically store physical metals such as gold, silver, and platinum in bank vaults, allowing investors to directly benefit from price fluctuations in precious metals while eliminating the cumbersome processes and additional costs associated with purchasing, insuring, and storing the metals themselves.
Incorporating precious metals into an investment portfolio aids in achieving asset diversification and can effectively hedge against inflation risks, protecting capital from the effects of fiat currency devaluation.
As we enter early 2026, there are 25 precious metals ETFs available on the market. Their investment strategies vary: some funds directly hold physical precious metals; others indirectly track metal prices through derivatives like futures contracts; and there are also ETFs that invest in stocks of precious metals mining companies. Among these, ETFs that directly invest in physical precious metals typically perform better, tracking the price movements of the precious metals themselves relatively accurately after fees.
Here are three precious metals ETFs worth watching currently:
SPDR Gold Shares is currently the largest gold ETF. The fund’s assets consist almost entirely of gold bars stored in bank vaults and a small amount of cash. This strategy allows investors to participate in gold’s upward price movements without needing to hold the physical commodity, while significantly reducing insurance, storage costs, and the risk of loss.
This ETF offers high liquidity, enabling holders to sell their shares quickly for cash when needed. Investors pay a management fee of 0.4%. While this fee causes the fund’s price to slightly underperform physical gold over the long term, the convenience it offers makes the cost relatively reasonable compared to other investment avenues. For instance, many gold mining stocks have underperformed gold for years due to issues like mine development cost overruns, management missteps, or excessive debt. Therefore, for investors seeking to broadly track the price of gold, SPDR Gold Shares is an excellent choice.
The iShares Silver Trust is the largest silver ETF. This fund holds physical silver bars stored in bank vaults, providing investors with a convenient way to participate in silver’s price appreciation, effectively avoiding the hassles and risks associated with buying silver stocks or physical silver coins.
This ETF also boasts excellent liquidity, and its management fee of 0.5% is reasonable. Although this fee means its long-term performance slightly lags behind silver itself, the fund still allows investors to broadly match silver price movements, offering more certain returns compared to investing in silver mining stocks—many of which also face operational issues that can cause their share prices to significantly underperform the price of silver.
For investors looking to invest in platinum, the abrdn Standard Physical Platinum Shares ETF provides a direct channel. Platinum is a key precious metal, primarily used in catalytic converters within the automotive industry. This ETF holds physical platinum bars stored in bank vaults and is one of the few investment vehicles focused on platinum.
While investors could also directly purchase platinum bars or jewelry, there are very few publicly listed companies specializing exclusively in this rare industrial metal. Even related companies typically mine multiple metals simultaneously, meaning their share prices do not purely and directly reflect the value of platinum. These inherent challenges in investing in platinum make the ETF’s management fee of 0.6% seem more reasonable.
