ETFs Score over Buying Physical Gold

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Exchange traded funds offer all advantages of GOLD at a lower cost

Akshaya Tritiya is just a few days away and along with jewellers, gold traders and gold buyers, even investors are gearing up to buy some amount of the precious metal on the auspicious day. The significance of buying or investing in gold on this day comes from the belief that anything bought on this day remains forever. This belief comes from the meaning of Akshaya, a Sanskrit word for something that never diminishes.

In India, on this day, people usually buy gold leafs, coins, biscuits and bricks. In addition, thanks to innovation by two Indians about a decade ago, a relatively new way of buying gold has emerged: exchange-traded funds (ETFs) for gold. And the good news is that gold ETFs, which come with several advantages over buying physical gold, is gaining popularity. Through innovative financial engineering, gold ETF combines the popularity of gold buying without holding it in physical form, making it possible to be traded on the bourses like stocks, and still giving investors to realize nearly the full value of physical gold.

Working of gold ETFs

In India, a mutual fund house is allowed to introduce (sell) gold ETFs to investors. The mutual fund approaches an authorized bank to arrange for some physical gold. It then approaches Sebi with a prospectus to mobilize funds from prospective investors. Once the prospectus is approved by the regulator, the fund collects money from investors and gives the investors ETF units equivalent to the amount invested by the investor. Each ETF unit could be equal to a fixed amount of gold, say one gram, 10 grams or so, or a particular value, say Rs 100, Rs 1,000 or something.

Once the offer closes, and the ETFs are listed on a bourse, investors holding gold ETFs units can buy and sell those units on the exchange, which is like trading in shares. The fund house, on its part, is responsible for ensuring the quality of gold it is holding with the bank against the money it mobilized from investors and also buys insurance for the physical gold held by the custodian bank. The custodian, on the other hand, is responsible for the safe keeping of the gold that is in its custody.

Looking at the popularity of trading in gold ETFs, every year on Akshaya Tritiya exchanges extend trading hours for only for gold ETFs, usually till 8 pm in the evening while the regular trading for shares closes at 4 pm.

The popularity of gold ETFs could be attributed to several of its advantages over holding physical gold. These advantages include high level of affordability, no risks of theft, lower costs of holding, high liquidity and nearly no discounts to market price of physical gold while selling and several others.

A new innovation in the gold investment space through the mutual fund route has been the gold fund of funds (

FoF) route. This has been introduced in the market mainly to tap those investors without a demat account but still willing to invest in gold ETFs. Under this type of investing, mutual funds mobilize money from investors, and then invest the same in gold ETFs, either in the ETF floated by the same fund house or floated by different fund houses.

Gold FoFs have some advantages and some disadvantages as well. Among the advantages is the ease of investing, that is you can invest in gold ETFs without a demat account. Of the major disadvantages are higher costs, which could be as high as 1.50% compared to about 0.75-1% for direct investments in gold ETFs. Another disadvantage is the double tracking error: First for gold ETFs in which a the FoF invests, and then its own tracking error.

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