I don't own gold or stocks either one (other than stock in our own business), so no personal bias on "stocks vs. gold"; I just like to look at the past as the being the best predictor of the future. One good site that has interactive graphs is
macrotrends.net; they have pretty good and easy-to-view stuff there on various investment items - gold, silver, stocks, oil, soybeans, platinum, etc. You can look at investment X vs. investment Y, over the course of different time frames, which is real handy imo.
For example, gold vs stocks (S&P 500, nothing fancy or exotic); over the last 5 years, gold has returned 46% and S&P has returned 58%. Stocks are the winner, but no big disparity in such a short-term view. Basically, stocks win by 26%.
Over the last ten years, disparity is much greater. Gold has returned 20% and S&P has returned 167%. Stocks win by 735%.
Last 20 years, gold is 234%, S&P is 495%. Stocks win by 111%.
Last 30 years, gold is 455%, S&P is 875%. Stocks win by 92%.
Max period listed is back to 1915, so 107 years. Gold looks very impressive, at 9,831%. Sounds good, but pales in comparison to the stock market's return, at 58,225%. In the longest run that we have data for, stocks win by 492%.
If I were going to be putting money in either one, those numbers make the logical choice seem readily apparent to me. I get that there's a 'hands-on' aspect of gold ownership and an emotional/psychological gratification and peace of mind that it would likely bring, but to me that alone wouldn't be enough reason to pick the constant mathematical loser.