[jklontz]

True, but unlike other commodities it's easy to take a long position on gold with ETFs like GLD which actually store the physical gold. For other commodities (like oil with ticker USO) it's not so simple to take a long position. The best you can do is trade options, with the added risk of a contango market.

[kasey_junk]

You are potentially overselling the "store physical gold" component of GLD depending on what you think the redemption rules of the fund are. As per usual Kid Dynamite is my favorite writer on the subject:

http://kiddynamitesworld.com/why-is-gld-so-hard-for-people-t...