3 Precious Metals ETFs Gaining Big as Gold Nears New Highs

Key Points

• Gold and silver have staged a significant rally in recent months, pushing the price of companies related to these metals higher.
• Investors who are bullish about the rally's chances of continuing into 2025 might turn to ETFs to maximize exposure or even make a leveraged play.
• UGL, DBP, and RING are three ETFs to consider for investors focusing on the metals rally.

Gold has repeatedly touched new highs in the last year, driven by persistent inflation, geopolitical instability in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, and growing market uncertainty over proposed Trump administration policies, including sweeping tariffs. As of February 18, 2025, the price of gold is around $2,937 per ounce, down just a few dollars from the latest all-time high achieved earlier in the month.

Gold's rally of about 44% in the last year comes out slightly ahead of silver's 43% gains over the same period. Other precious metals like platinum have also increased in price in the last year, if not to the same degree as gold and silver, offering new opportunities for stocks related to these metals.

While investors typically view precious metals as safe havens during periods of volatility or uncertainty in the market, the scale of these rallies may be sufficient to draw interest from more proactive, risk-tolerant investors as well. Depending upon your degree of bullishness about the rally's potential to continue—and your willingness to take on risk—one or more of the following exchange-traded funds (ETFs) may offer a convenient way to capitalize on the action in the precious metals space.

ProShares Ultra Gold: High-Risk, High-Reward Leveraged Play

Investors with a healthy appetite for risk and the willingness to monitor the price of gold very closely might look to the ProShares Ultra Gold NYSEARCA: UGL. UGL is a leveraged fund offering 2x exposure to the price of gold, resetting on a daily basis. The leverage amplifies both returns and potential losses, so this fund is best reserved for investors strongly bullish on gold over the short term and with room to withstand an outsized loss, just in case.

Due to the way that the fund's target index is built, UGL does not always match the spot price of gold exactly, so it can occasionally deviate slightly from the motion of gold prices on the market. Similarly, because leverage resets each day, investors should never plan to hold shares of UGL longer than that duration, as the returns will quickly become skewed. Still, this fund's capacity to magnify short-term spikes in the price of gold is largely unmatched in the ETF space given its expense ratio of 0.95%.

Invesco DB Precious Metals Fund: Dual Exposure in a Commodity Pool

The Invesco DB Precious Metals Fund NYSEARCA: DBP is a great way to gain exposure to gold and silver simultaneously through a single investment. DBP provides access to futures contracts on these two leading precious metals, although they are not evenly weighted within the fund—as of February 14, 2025, gold futures constituted more than 80% of fund holdings, with silver futures making up the remainder.

Besides the dual-exposure prospect, DBP is also unique in that it is a commodity pool, an investment vehicle pooling investor funds to provide access to the commodity futures market. Along with access to commodity futures, though, comes some additional risk, as well as a moderately high expense ratio of 0.76%. It's hard to argue with DBP's performance over the last year, though—the fund has returned 42.6% in the year leading to February 15, 2025, far outpacing the S&P 500 over the same period.

iShares MSCI Global Gold Miners ETF: International Gold Mining Access

A growing number of so-called "gold miners" funds have emerged in recent years, providing indirect access to the gold market by focusing on shares of companies that are involved in the mining and production of gold. The iShares MSCI Global Gold Miners ETF NASDAQ: RING remains a leader in this space both for its competitive expense ratio of 0.39% and for its broad international exposure across both developed and emerging markets.

Gold mining is a global industry, and some of the top companies in the space have operations in parts of the world that are oftentimes overlooked by investors targeting other industries. For this reason, an international gold miners fund is particularly attractive. RING's 39 holdings represent a broad swath of the total gold mining space, though a handful of major players like Newmont Corp. NYSE: NEM have outsized allocations. No matter, though, when the fund performs as well as it has in recent months—RING is up a tremendous 65.4% in the year leading to February 15, 2025, and 22.2% so far this year as well.