Dunn: You have to look at gold in portfolio terms regarding its role in a portfolio and what does. It does mitigate risk, which is a little crazy because gold does have some volatility. But it tends to have volatility at the right times.

There are certain times that are better to own gold. There’s an argument that investors should own it all the time. The challenge now is there are mixed signals. You typically don’t want own gold in a rising rate environment. The knock on gold is that it doesn’t spin off income, so some people see it as a dead asset that doesn’t earn anything.

The counter to that is Donald Trump saying the price of the dollar is too high, and trying to drive that down would be very supportive toward gold’s outlook going forward. Gold is off to an okay start in 2017, but not as well as the other metals as people try to sort out the mixed signals.

ETFA: What percentage of a portfolio should be allocated to gold?

Dunn: Traditionally, we see anywhere from 2 percent to 5 percent in client portfolios among financial advisors.

ETFA: Is that enough? Does that do the job of diversification?

Dunn: A little bit. It depends on what they mix it with. Gold typically falls into the alternative category. Does gold standing alone [at 2 percent to 5 percent] do enough? Maybe not.

ETFA: How do investors use your products?

Dunn: Hedge funds play the metals more on the tactical side, but the asset base has actually remained more solid. Certainly, gold has been more sticky than some of the others. Last year we saw asset growth and not a whole lot of outflows, even after the election when the metals markets sold off. That was more of a price impact than a redemption impact.

When we think about bringing new products to market we’re much more interested in playing in a bigger basket. We have products in filing with the SEC we hope come to market relatively soon that will be broader based and will include the metals group and other commodities. GLTR is our first attempt at putting together a basket of metals. The challenge of having a physical component is there are only so many commodities you can do in a physical basket.