A New Way to Profit From Gold Volatility

After gaining 65% in 2025, gold continued higher by another 28% (from the 2025 close) to peak at over $5,500 per ounce on January 28, 2026.

But gold now trades for about $4,600, down 15% from its peak, so the timing was not great when Nicholas Wealth launched the Nicholas Gold Income ETF (GLDN) on February 17, 2026. As I write this, the GLDN share price is down 18% since its IPO.

Let’s take a look at this new ETF and take a stab at its potential as a gold-focused investment.

According to the NicholasX website, GLDN holds a combination of gold-mining stocks and gold-commodity ETFs. Here are the top holdings as of May 4:

The income portion of the fund’s return comes from options trading. A look at the full holdings list shows trading in both puts and calls within a defined-risk strategy. The website gives this explanation:

The Fund’s defined risk option premium strategy uses options on ETFs across multiple asset classes (e.g., equities, commodities, fixed income). Through the defined risk option premium strategy, two options transactions are paired together in order to create a “defined risk” trade that caps the maximum possible gains and losses from the outset.

GLDN pays weekly dividends and appears to have a targeted 15% yield.

The YieldMax Gold Miners Option Income ETF (GDXY) is a comparable ETF. Since GLDN launched, it has posted a minus 14% total return. GDXY, on the other hand, is down 17% in total returns over the same period. Active management by Nicholas Wealth seems beneficial, at least when gold is declining.

Over the long term, both GLDN and GDXY will see returns that mirror gold’s price. But if you are bullish on gold, as I am, GLDN would be the better choice to gain exposure to gold-mining stocks and earn an attractive distribution yield.