I suppose if you consider nearly 100% price appreciation in the past 5 years lousy.
It very well may have, but I've never known anyone to go really long on a commodity. Gold probably makes sense for short term commodity speculation or for people who make hedging bets for short term stock trading, but as a 20+ yr investment, gold is relatively poopy. In the past fiteen years, gold has been about flat while the S&P has returned 600%. Additionally gold has much more ups&downs than any of the broad stock indexes in any given year. Hence, useful for short term bets and hedging, not for long term investments.