Didn’t Burl Ives sing a song about this in the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer TV special?

The gold and silver medals for this year’s best-performing ETFs went, fittingly, to funds tracking companies that mine the precious metals. Silver and gold mining ETFs dominated 2025 performance tables, a reminder that when these funds rally, they tend to do so in incredible fashion. Silver and gold mining ETFs were a tour de force in 2025, and the macro forces behind that run aren’t expected to fade in 2026. It’s an area that advisors may want to keep an eye on in the new year.

“Gold miners and junior gold miners can be very volatile,” said Dan Sotiroff, senior analyst at Morningstar. “When they have a good year, they have a spectacular year. But then they can go for long periods of time where they just do absolutely nothing, if not lose money.”

We Wants the Precious

Spot gold and silver prices have reached all-time highs this year, trading near $4,500 and $70 per ounce, respectively, as of Dec. 21. That performance has flowed directly into the companies mining them. “It’s kind of a levered play on gold,” Sotiroff said. “You’re getting access to gold, but also access to the businesses that extract the stuff.”

The five best-performing funds this year (excluding leveraged and inverse products), according to Morningstar Direct data, include:

• iShares MSCI Global Silver and Metals Miners ETF (SLVP) was up 200% as of Dec. 21.
• Amplify Junior Silver Miners ETF (SILJ) was up 186%.
• Global X Gold Explorers ETF (GOEX) was up 182%.
• Sprott Junior Gold Miners ETF (SGDJ) was up 175%.
• VanEck Junior Gold Miners ETF (GDXJ) was up 175%.

War: What is it Good for? When gold and silver products are having a strong year, it usually signals investors are seeking safe havens from upheaval and uncertainty. This year offered no shortage of either, from tariffs, persistent inflation and rate cuts, to the war in Ukraine entering its fourth year and US-Venezuela disputes over drug-trafficking. Those pressures have pushed central banks to buy gold at historically high levels, while also increasing silver purchases.

“Peace is actually bad for commodities,” Kathy Kriskey, Invesco commodity strategist, said during a Bloomberg event this month. “It’s good for everyone, but it’s bad for commodities.” And peace doesn’t appear imminent. “A lot of the reasons why many investors want to hold gold will still exist in 2026,” Kriskey added.

This was the year that dual share classes finally got their wings.

The biggest development in years for the open-end fund world is the advent of dual share classes, meaning funds can create ETF shares of mutual funds and vice versa. The concept is far from new: Vanguard until 2023 had a patent on ETF shares of mutual funds, and it launched its first more than 20 years ago. More than 80 asset managers filed this year with the Securities and Exchange Commission for exemptive relief from requirements under the Investment Company Act of 1940 that would allow them to add dual share classes. And, following a back-and-forth the agency had with Dimensional Fund Advisors that led to that firm being the first to get such relief, the SEC earlier this month granted approval for dozens of other companies.

The development, by many accounts, will be transformative for the fund business. But it’s going to take a while for dual share classes to get going.

Are We Having Fund Yet?

It’s been about a month and a half since Dimensional got the SEC’s greenlight to add ETF shares for 13 of its existing mutual funds. As a company that for years has offered strategies in both vehicles, it’s well-positioned for the dual-share-class rollout. But the industry more widely is expected to add share classes to products slowly.

That’s because of a few challenges:

• Asset managers that have focused on one vehicle are having to adjust to add the other to their lines, as things like the back-office reporting of a different structure may be new to them.
• There is likely not enough capital among lead market makers to support ETF share-class rollouts widely.
• Distribution may be a hurdle, with some broker-dealers being slow to add ETFs to their systems, in part because of compensation arrangements with asset managers that favor mutual funds.
• In addition, fund boards have to consider whether it’s appropriate to add a share class, as not all strategies are good candidates for both structures. For example, adding an ETF share class to a mutual fund with capacity constraints may not be ideal, as ETFs can’t be closed to new investors the way mutual funds can.

Swimming Upstream: Among the numerous firms that have permission to add share classes in different wrappers, fewer will be adding mutual fund shares to existing ETFs. But for asset managers that have built most of their business on ETFs, there is a reason to consider mutual funds: retirement plans. F/m Investments, for example, is prepping mutual fund shares of its US Treasury 3 Month Bill ETF (TBIL) and Ultrashort Treasury Inflation-Protected Security ETF (RBIL). Whether strategies can actually make inroads to 401(k)s this way is of course an unanswered question, but we may get some idea in 2026.

There’s no denying crypto’s appeal has skyrocketed since the days of Ethereum miners and PC gamers feuding over graphics processing units. We know that’s deep, tech-nerd territory, but the point is that crypto used to be niche, and now it’s far from fringe.

That shift became especially clear last year when the first spot crypto ETFs debuted, signaling broader acceptance of digital assets in mainstream financial markets. The momentum continued in this year, with US-based crypto ETFs pulling in roughly $42 billion in inflows, according to Morningstar Direct. Still, investor enthusiasm hasn’t necessarily translated into strong performance. That’s because crypto is fundamentally different from something like gold, where macroeconomic forces tend to provide clearer signals for price movement, said Dan Sotiroff, senior analyst at Morningstar.

“It goes back to one of the selling points of Bitcoin and crypto in general, which is that it’s on this decentralized exchange and it’s very difficult to figure out who the exact owners are and why they’re buying or selling on any given day,” Sotiroff told ETF Upside. “It’s a little bit of a mystery.”

Up and Down and All Around

BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) has taken in more than $25 billion in flows in 2025 alone and now holds about $66 billion in net assets. IBIT is the fastest-growing ETF in history and ranks among the top funds by inflows this year. Yet despite that popularity, the ETF is down just over 6.4% through Dec. 21, according to Morningstar Direct. IBIT isn’t an outlier, either. Several other widely held crypto ETFs are also in the red:

• The ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF (ARKB) and Bitwise Bitcoin ETF (BITB) are each down about 6.4%.
• Fidelity’s Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC) has fallen 6.3%, while the VanEck Bitcoin ETF (HODL) is down roughly 6.2%.

That kind of drawdown isn’t a surprise, though, and likely won’t slow momentum, said James Seyffart, senior research analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. “People are allocating to these things for the long term,” he told ETF Upside, adding that his firm expects more than 100 crypto-based ETFs to launch next year. “If you’re investing in this space, you understand exactly how volatile it is and how poor performance can be.”