Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Where to Invest in Gold

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When an experience investor does not know what the future holds, he invests in gold.

The best way to invest in gold is to buy the purest form of physical gold as possible, namely the bullion bars or coins.  If given the option, bars are better than coins.  In principal the less art work the better.  The more art work on a bullion will usually comes with higher price spread.  Bullion price spread is usually 3% to 7%



The most common Malaysia gold bullion in Malaysia is the Kijang Emas Gold Bullion Coin.  I only know you can get them from Maybank, you can check current gold counter rate here and it can be purchased from selected Maybank branches nationwide





UOB also offer saying that they have widest range of gold bullions and it seems they do provide narrower spread (2.6% onwards) in their price list.  You will need to call or email them for info.

There are also some retail sellers like   Poh Kong and PAMP but they don't guarantee buy back at market rate or they may buy back at 15-20% lower than market price.

Other sellers like myNetGold, Gold2Trade, R2Gold, SecureGold aren't really proper gold investment.  As of right now, I don't see them any better than a private company's shopping vouchers.  If you must deal with one, I myself may start looking at Public Gold, which has nothing to do with Public Bank.  Its just a tiny company in Penang.

However, those un-real gold sellers can be a good medium to 'speculate' gold price.  If that is your main goal then you may also open a gold investment account with Public Bank or Maybank.

Generally if you cann't afford even one ounce of gold bullion (MYR 3,000), then you should forget about gold investment.  But you still can speculate them using virtual accounts as mentioned above.  

The heavier bullion bar you buy, the smaller the price spread it is.  There is a saying that for about MYR 100,000 the spread can be as small as 1%+ which makes it extremely attractive over a shorter term accumulation says 1-3 years of fighting inflation during economy down turn.