Over the past few years, pretty much every investor has become familiar with gold. The shiny precious metal has surged in price and has managed to hold strong while broad indexes have slipped, highlighting its appeal as a diversification agent and safe haven investment. This has prompted many investors to ramp up their allocations to the space in order to take advantage of these favorable trends and lead their portfolios to broad gains. After all, gold-backed ETFs such as IAU have seen tremendous gains over the past few years including double digit returns in the year-to-date period and more than a 165% surge in the past five year period, figures that far outpace similar investments in the S&P 500 over the same time frame [see also Three Reasons Why Gold Is Overvalued].