iShares Gold Trust owns gold transferred to the Trust in exchange for shares issued by the Trust (Shares). The assets of the Trust consist primarily of gold held by the Trust's custodian on behalf of the Trust. The activities of the Trust are limited to issuing shares in exchange for the gold deposited with the Custodian as consideration, selling gold as necessary to cover the Sponsor's fee, Trust expenses not assumed by the Sponsor and other liabilities, and delivering gold in exchange for Baskets surrendered for redemption. It does not engage in any activities designed to obtain a profit from, or to ameliorate losses caused by, changes in the price of gold. The IAU YTD return is shown above.
The YTD Return on the IAU YTD return page and across the coverage universe of our site,
is a measure of the total return for a given investment year-to-date for the current calendar year
(up to the end of prior trading session). Arguably, choosing the current calendar year for a measurement
period is on the one hand completely arbitrary, but on the other hand a year-to-date look can be extremely
useful in the context of our country's tax system which taxes gains and income on a calendar year basis.
Thus, researching Year-To-Date Returns is good practice for investors — whether IAU YTD return or other benchmarks/peers
— and when doing so it is also important to factor in dividends, because a financial instrument's YTD return is
more than just the change in price if that instrument pays a dividend or coupon. Our website aims to empower investors
by performing the IAU YTD return calculation (with any dividends reinvested as applicable), and to provide a
coverage universe of many stocks and ETFs to be able to compare YTD returns.
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