Gold Is Defying 24-Year-High Treasury Yields. Will Gold ETFs Follow?

Gold is showing unusual resilience in an environment that would traditionally be hostile to bullion, and that could have important implications for gold ETFs. Gold has held above $4,000 an ounce even as the U.S. 10-year Treasury yield briefly hit 5.34% on Thursday, its highest level since 2002. Higher yields typically raise the opportunity cost of owning non-yielding gold. Yet bullion has continued to attract demand, suggesting that factors beyond interest rates are increasingly driving the market, as highlighted by Reuters. A New Gold Premium Is Supporting Prices According to experts cited by Reuters, gold’s "debasement and de-dollarisation" premium, that is the portion of its price not explained by real yields and the dollar, has averaged more than $1,000 an ounce since 2022, compared with roughly $120 before the Russia-Ukraine war. The premium currently stands around $840. Reserve diversification, geopolitical hedging and sustained central-bank purchases have helped create this structural demand. China imported 1,077 metric tons of gold from January to August 2026, putting it on track for its strongest annual import performance in more than a decade. Central banks, including China and Poland, have also continued accumulating bullion. The ETF Catalyst Could Come From the Fed This is where the setup becomes particularly relevant for gold ETFs. Central-bank demand is relatively insensitive to Treasury yields, but Western investment demand through gold-backed ETFs is much more rate-sensitive. Reuters cited analysts who expect investment demand to rise once the U.S. tightening cycle ends. That creates a potential two-stage demand story: central banks and physical buyers have supported gold despite elevated yields, while a future decline in yields could bring additional capital into gold ETFs. SPDR Gold Shares (NYSE:GLD), the largest gold-backed ETF, has about $141.7 billion in assets and charges a 0.40% expense ratio. iShares Gold Trust (NYSE:IAU) has about $62.2 billion in net assets and charges a 0.25% expense ratio. For lower-cost exposure, SPDR Gold MiniShares (NYSE:GLDM) has about $30.7 billion in assets and charges just 0.10%. The key ETF signal to watch is therefore whether falling yields translate into renewed creations and rising holdings in physically backed gold funds. If that happens while central banks maintain elevated purchases, gold ETFs could gain a second demand engine on top of the structural forces that have already helped bullion withstand exceptionally high Treasury yields. Read Also: Michael Burry Shifts To Long-Dated AI Bets As SOXX Suffers Its Worst Quarter Since 2025 Photo: Shutterstock