Investor of the Month: Meet a gold-fund manager up 23% this year
David Miller, manager of the Strategy Shares Gold Enhanced Yield ETF (GOLY), is BI's Investor of the Month for April.
It has no doubt been a good few months to manage a gold fund.
The precious metal, which has ballooned 25% in price this year, has seen the perfect confluence of factors for appreciation. Recession fears are rising, pushing investors into the safe-haven asset. Gold is also considered an inflation hedge, and worries are growing that the trade war could push up prices. On top of that, geopolitical tensions have been high, causing central banks to snatch up the metal over the last few years.
"If I'm concerned about economic uncertainty, the stock market is not the place to go. If you're concerned about the US debt situation because the US is doing strange things, that created a lot of uncertainty in Treasury bills, too," Miller said. "To that point, gold is one of those few places where you can feel like, 'OK, if I own gold, I know I own gold. It's still gold no matter what anyone does.'"
Despite the broad tailwinds, Miller and his fund have stood out. GOLY is up almost 23% in 2025 alone, and has risen 37% over the last year. Both of those numbers beat 99% of similar funds over those timelines, Morningstar data shows. Not to mention, the S&P 500 is down 5% year-to-date.
But there's more than initially meets the eye with GOLY — 90% of its holdings are actually investment-grade corporate bonds, and 10% is in Treasury bills. The fund then gets its exposure to gold through a gold futures overlay. The T-bills are used as collateral.
Essentially, the fund has a 100% exposure to gold's price while collecting the bond yields. Right now, GOLY yields 5% annually.
"The idea behind this is we think we could make gold better by adding a yield, or we think we can make bonds better by making them inflation protected," Miller said.
The combination resembles a product offered in India, he said, where inflation has historically been high.
"In India, frankly, nobody really wants to own bonds because if you had like a 12-13% inflation rate on the rupee — if you own a bond portfolio and it matures 10 years later — you lost like three-quarters of the purchasing power of your bond portfolio," Miller said.
"What they did in India to solve for that was they created these sovereign gold bonds, where you'd get a fixed amount of gold bonds that you were buying into," he continued, "and then when the bond matures 10 years later you'd get the same amount of gold, you'd get your rupee yield, but you wouldn't have to worry about the principal losing all that purchasing power."
Those considered for BI's Investor of the Month include managers of US-listed mutual funds or ETFs, those whose funds have outperformed peers in a given month, and those whose funds are outperforming a benchmark index (in most cases this will be the S&P 500) on a trailing 12-month basis. Leveraged funds are not considered.
Year-to-date leaderboard (as of market close on April 28):
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