Over the last 100 years, you'd have done significantly better by putting your money into an index fund -- and had less volatility. As far as I can tell, gold is just a lousy place to keep your money.
What kind of long term are you talking about?
What kind of long term are you talking about?
In a hundred years, there can be wars, reparations, and lots of damage to equity.
I think some distinction should be made on store of value (win for gold) vs asset appreciation (win for stocks), especially once you start talking about 100years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%26P_500#History
This is just a technicality however. In practice you have to buy stocks according to the index yourself or invest into a fund that mirrors the index for you. The secret sauce in ETFs is that algorithms do the work of the fund manager and thus reduce costs.