As gold retreats, should advisors reconsider how they access it?

Can gold still hedge risk at current prices?

In Dragosits view, those four drivers are a wider erosion of trust in institutions and central banks, the ongoing de-dollarization and gold stockpiling by non-Western central banks, ongoing geopolitical uncertainty, and high levels of fiscal debt in the developed world. Put simply, as people lose trust in their governments and institutions, they turn to gold.

As gold rose past $4,000 and then $5,000 (USD) per ounce, there was some speculation that the yellow metal had lost its qualities as a risk hedge and had started to behave like a risk-on asset. Dragosits disagrees with that view and notes that while other commodities have appeared as a stronger risk hedge in an inflationary cycle, that performance is only short-term. He argues that if and when equity markets begin to sell off and shift into a risk-off cycle and bond yields pull back, there should be a resumption of gold’s position as a risk hedge. In the meantime, he argues that there could be better, or at least different, ways for investors to access gold equities

Harvest ETFs, he explains, is offering a gold strategy with more differentiated sources of return. Their new Harvest Premium Yield Gold ETF (HPYG) combines exposures to gold bullion and gold mining equities with leverage and a call and put options strategy to pay out income. It’s a strategy that comes with far more moving parts than many investors might expect from their gold allocations, but the team at Harvest ETFs believes the income components of the portfolio suit a gold allocation that has corrected this year.

“Bullion isn’t earning clients any income. They’ve been on that ride. We hit an all-time high in 2026 in January. And then we pulled back and clients have held and felt every bit of that,” explains Avinash D’Souza, VP of Product Strategy at Harvest ETFs. “HPYG gives you an opportunity to earn income from those positions and get access to growth potential as well.”

How a gold options ETF works

Dragosits and D’Souza explained that their new ETF holds allocations both to physical bullion through a US-listed gold ETF and a portfolio of gold equities held in Harvest’s HGGG index ETF. It also holds an exposure to Harvest’s Canadian T-Bill ETF, which serves as the source of cash used for the ETF’s put writing strategy.