To The Moon

According to the gold demand report of World Gold Council, demand for gold from both central banks and Chinese consumers increased in the first quarter, which pushed up the price of gold. 

Major central banks added 228 tons of gold to their global reserves in the first quarter of the year. Meanwhile, China enjoyed its first post-epidemic quarter without the strictly pandemic prevention policy , which spurred gold purchases by consumers.

Precious Metals ETF

As a result, exchange-traded fund, called the $SPDR Gold Shares(GLD)$ , is up 10.64% since the beginning of the year, which is ahead of ETFs targeted to different core asset classes such as U.S. bonds and global real estate. 

For example, the Vanguard Total Bond Market ETF rose only 3.22%, while the iShares Global REIT ETF rose only 3.15%.

Source: ETF.com. Ranked by the scale of asset management scale (from largest to smallest).

With nearly $60 billion in assets, the SPDR Gold Shares Fund is the largest gold-linked exchange-traded product. Its share price is designed to reflect one-tenth of the price of gold bullion. Launched in 2004, the fund is also the oldest exchange-traded product backed by physical precious metals.

Prices of other precious metals have also risen, as reflected in the success of funds such as the abrdn Physical Precious Metals Basket Shares ETF (GLTR). Similar to the SPDR Gold Shares Fund, this abrdn fund holds shares in physical metals, while it is diversified into gold, silver, platinum and palladium. The features above offers a broader investment solution holding a single commodity for advisors who want to own a complex of precious metals without increasing their risk.

The precious metals in the abrdn fund are held in protected vaults in the UK and Switzerland. The fund has gained 6.34% so far this year with an annual fee of 0.60%.

Precious Metals ETFs Slump As Investors Dump Gold And Silver

For investors preferring stocks to physical metals, the Global Gold ETF, called iShares MSCI (RING) offers a portfolio of 34 stocks involved in the mining, production and transportation of precious metals. iShares has an asset base of $436 million, which is smaller than the SPDR Gold Shares Fund; contrarily, its dividend yield is nearly 2.36%, compared to 0% of the SPDR fund's dividend yield.

As for exchange-traded products which is linked to precious metals, one of the long-standing obstacles is that investors cannot actually take physical delivery of gold and silver. However, skeptical investors and conspiracy theorists who want to see and hold gold can now invest in instruments that allow them to do so.

The VanEck Merk Gold Trust ETF (OUNZ) allows shareholders to convert their fund shares into physical gold bars and coins which can customize face value, which is the special products that the trust holding gold products popularly and widely such as SPDR Gold Shares and iShares Gold Trust (IAU) are unable to do.

The receipt of physical gold from a VanEck fund is not considered a taxable event, because the shareholders of the fund are simply receiving what they already own. The 0.25% annual fee from the fund does not include the delivery fee for receiving physical gold if requested by the investor.

Investors should consider diversifying their precious metals portfolios with a focus on stocks and bonds. Therefore, the ETF market offers a number of unique and affordable opportunities.

$SPDR黄金ETF(GLD)$ $黄金信托ETF(iShares)(IAU)$ $Aberdeen Standard Physical Precious Metals Basket Shares ETF(GLTR)$ $Merk黄金信托ETV(OUNZ)$ $iShares MSCI Global Gold Miners ETF(RING)$ $黄金信托ETF(iShares)(IAU)$