Whether or not gold is a good investment, is a question that does not have a simple answer. Gold has appreciated substantially over the past couple of years. The growth rate of late has been much higher than the conventional rate of appreciation. However, if we look at the past 15-20 years record, it is seen that Gold is a hedge against inflation. Over the last 20 years, the average return from Gold has been around 7%. No matter which country you originate from, there is a chance that your country’s currency will suffer a downfall at a particular point of time. Gold, on the other hand, retains its true value and can help you protect your riches because it does not rely on the state of the country’s economic, whether it is on the up or downtrend.

How can one invest in gold?

Gold can be bought in various forms and the decision should be based on the reason you need gold. If you see this purely as an investment, you can either buy it in the form of physical gold — bars, biscuits and or coins or even in a dematerialized form.

For most Indians, gold purchases usually mean buying jewellery. However, the disadvantage of buying gold in the form of jewellery is that its resale is not always a profitable proposition.

Here are some other ways of investing in gold:

Gold ETFs

You can invest in gold by buying Gold Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs). Being ETFs, these funds are listed and traded on the stock exchange i.e. investors can buy and sell them like any other stock on the stock exchange, on a real- time basis. All you need is a demat account and a share trading account with a broker or sub-broker who deals in stocks. These are traded in units of one. That means you can buy one or more units at a time. Each unit represents approximately the market value of one gram of gold.

Gold ETFs are traded close to real-time gold prices in the market, that is, ETF prices move up and down with the market price of gold in the conventional marketplace. Your expenses in an ETF would be very low: you would pay securities transaction tax (STT), brokerage /service tax, and the like, which are unlikely to exceed around 1% of market price. You’d hold gold in demat form in your demat account, just as you hold shares. If you decide to sell your ETF units, you can do so through your stock broker or sub-broker and the charges would be the same as what you paid while buying the ETF. Thus an ETF is very convenient, and you need not worry about the purity of the gold, secure storage, insurance against theft, and so on.

Physical gold

This is the traditional way to invest in gold. Investors can buy gold and then store it in a bank’s locker. If you are one of those people who keep buying gold jewellery for a marriage of a daughter or son, a better option would be to buy gold ETF units now at the current price of gold, hold them in your demat account, and sell them in the future, whenever you want, and use the money to buy jewellery then. In this way, you will be protecting yourself from rising gold prices, while also sparing yourself anxiety about the purity and safety of your gold. You can keep accumulating gold at a slow rate, perhaps even one gram at a time.

It is evident that gold is an asset class that you can rarely go wrong with. Therefore, think seriously about investing in gold.