Which Gold Tracker? — 2010 update

This is an update to the post that dates back 15 months ago already:

• Which Gold Tracker?

You still need to read that previous post, as this one comes as an addendum.

Two new contenders have been created in the Gold ETF realm: the Physical Swiss Gold Shares (SGOL), and the the COMEX Gold Trust (IAU).

Competition is fierce, and this is to the benefits of investors, who have seen management fees decline:

The iShares Comex Gold Trust (NYSEArca: IAU) has pulled in more assets than the physical gold ETF behemoth SPDR Gold Trust (NYSEArca: GLD) in two of the past three months, suggesting BlackRock’s price cut on the fund in July is starting to pay dividends, according to data compiled by IndexUniverse.com.

IAU is quite similar to GLD and a third competitor, the ETFS Physical Swiss Gold ETF (NYSEArca: SGOL), except that it’s now the cheapest of the three and also boasts of being the only physical gold ETF having 100 percent daily allocation, meaning it guarantees shareholder claims on the gold the ETF represents on a daily basis. BlackRock cut IAU’s expense ratio to 0.25 percent a year from 0.40 percent. GLD still charges 0.40 percent, while SGOL charges 0.39 percent.
[...]
Also, GLD enjoys name recognition among advisers that IAU and SGOL don’t yet. For example, in August, when financial markets were digesting a slew of weaker-than-expected economic data, GLD was the gold ETF of choice, hands down. GLD hauled in $851.1 million in August, compared with $178.1 million for IAU and $151.9 for SGOL.

New York-based BlackRock, the world’s biggest money management company, owns San Francisco-based iShares, itself the largest ETF company on the planet.

These two ETFs seem very good contenders.