I agree with neerman. Do not invest in gold in USA. I am a business major myself and taken many finance courses and seeing the historical trends of gold market, it's a bad idea to invest in gold alone. Rather make your portfolio consisting different betas (Ranging from 0.5 to 2) and whose correlations are negative. The standalone risk of gold is extremely high. The standard deviation (which measures standalone risk) of gold is 21.3%. Golds are much riskier than bonds. The gold market is extremely volatile.