Quick Read
The S&P 500 ETF SPY ([NYSEARCA:SPY](https://247wallst.com/companies/SPY/)) is up 244.87% over ten years while the gold ETF GLD ([NYSEARCA:GLD](https://247wallst.com/companies/GLD/)) returned 237.57% over the same period, but equities outpaced gold over multi-decade horizons because underlying businesses generate compounding profits; U.S. corporate profits hit $4,352.1 billion in Q4 2025 with 9.6% year-over-year growth.
Long-term investors with 20-plus-year horizons don’t need gold as a hedge because equity recoveries compound over time, while gold produces no cash flows and only functions as a store of value rather than a value creator.
The analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 stocks and SPDR S&P 500 ETF wasn’t one of them. Get them here FREE.
On a recent episode of The Investing for Beginners Podcast, co-host Andrew Sather offered a contrarian take on a piece of conventional wisdom that resurfaces every time markets wobble. Gold gets sold as a safe hedge that retains its value, and Sather pushes back on the leap from store of value to actual investment.
His framing is simple. “Just because something’s a store of value doesn’t mean it creates value,” Sather said. “You buy a rock of gold, it’s still a rock of gold like 2 years later.” Stocks, by contrast, represent ownership in businesses that create profits, and those profits compound. There are no cash flows that gold produces, whether on its own or through any other means.
The Cash-Flow Case, In Numbers
The numbers from the Bureau of Economic Analysis make Sather’s point concrete. U.S. corporate profits reached $4,352.1 billion in the fourth quarter of 2025, with year-over-year growth of 9.6%. Those profits span manufacturing ($759.6 billion), financial services ($897.1 billion), information technology ($317.7 billion), and retail ($415.8 billion). Real GDP grew at a 2% annualized rate in the first quarter of 2026, with exports up 12.9%. A bar of gold sitting in a vault generated none of this.
The analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named…
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