Best ETF for gold (ISA)

bliss77_2

I'm planning to invest some money in gold ETFs. I'm looking for ETFs that are backed by physical gold. Could someone suggest good ETF funds that we can invest through ISA?

Voyager2002

I suggest that you take professional advice: at most points of the economic cycle, what you propose to do would be an excellent way to lose money.

bliss77_2

Voyager2002 wrote: »

I suggest that you take professional advice: at most points of the economic cycle, what you propose to do would be an excellent way to lose money.

Could you please elaborate? Why do you think investing in physical gold is not a good idea?

Voyager2002

Because most of the time the price, after adjusting for inflation, will fall. Historically that is what has happened. Of course there are particular periods when the gold price shoots up, but if you (or I) knew how to spot those periods in advance then we would already be millionaires.

Voyager2002

FWIW I began investing in 2010, when the recovery after the financial crisis was getting going... Most of my investments did well: even my shares in Russia have kept most of their value... The only real disaster was a fund invested in shares in the USA: a market that has put in spectacularly good performance over the last few years. Unfortunately my fund was heavily invested in companies involved with gold, and it performed so badly that the manager was sacked and it is essentially a zombie fund.

masonic

There's a difference between owning a fund that invests in companies involved with gold and a commodity fund backed by physical gold. While not a great investment in its own right, it can be a useful diversifier and a small allocation, with regular rebalancing, can reduce the volatility of an equities heavy portfolio. The iShares ETC (SGLN) would be worth a look.

bowlhead99

I hold ETFS Physical PPSG basket. It's 50% gold and the rest split between silver, platinum and palladium. If you have a particular reason why you think gold will do better than the other metals (other than you like the colour) then sure, buy gold only. As suggested above, it is just a diversifier in a portfolio and so there's no intrinsic reason to gamble on just gold, just silver, etc., imho.

Ticker for that one is PHPM or PHPP.