The Incredible Rise And Unprecedented Decline Of Gold ETFs [CHART]

In making its case yesterday to short gold, Goldman Sachs pointed out that gold ETFs were seeing significant outflows that weren't likely to abate soon.

SocGen also recently cited gold ETF outflows, recently, as a big negative sign for the commodity.

Of course, gold ETFs are a pretty new thing. They've enabled investors to get gold exposure directly via stocks, something that wasn't possible a decade ago.

Big gold ETFs are among the biggest gold holders in the world.

Just to give you some perspective, here's a chart of total holdings of all gold ETFs. You can see the incredible rise out of nowhere, and you can see that although there have been blips, the recent decline is unprecedented.