However, if you would like to take some level of risks, then going in for gold investments is the best option at the moment. If we take a look at the history of the gold prices, we can see that there has been tremendous growth in its price in the recent years. This can be attributed to the slowdown in US economy and volatility in the consumer market, reduced spending by the consumers etc.However, India and China, the two highly populated countries in the world is still persuading towards gold and accounts for upto 47% of the gold reserves in the world. The trend is only set to continue in the coming years and the gold prices is expected to raise further, as there is no immediate relief seen in the economy slowdown and all the investors are hedging towards GOLD as a commodity safe haven for the investors.
Now, if you are in India and thinking about investing in GOLD, the best option for you would be to invest either in the form of gold coins or GOLD bars. There are a number of institutions out there that are selling GOLD coins at a reasonable price for potential buyers - including private players such as TATA's Tanishq, ordinary jewellery shops along with some of the well reputed banks including State Bank of India (SBI), HSBC, HDFC etc. However following points should be kept in mind while making a purchase of the gold coins:
1. Not all sellers would be willing to buy back the gold coins. This also includes the banks, which RBI has directed to only sell the gold coins but not buy back.
2. Your local jewellery shops may be willing to buy back the gold coin you had purchase. However, most of these jewellers will not be interested in buying it back for cash, but rather in exchange for their own jewellery or other similar commodities from them.
3. Buy Online. This can be quite risk free if you are going to buy from a well reputed online store, however there might be additional premium charges applied by the online retailers which can eat up some of your profit. Drawback is that you wont get a buy back scheme from them.
4. Tanishq is the only well known seller which agrees to buy back the coins, however there might be some amount of additional handling charges applied on the amount. Even then, this is the only best way for an individual to sell their gold coins.
Note that gold coins can help you with good returns only if you are planning to retain the coins with your for atleast 10-12 months time frame. On an average, gold prices has been souring at a rate of about 19% per annum in the recent times in India. With the global economy still looking bleak for another year, you can place a confident bet on investing in gold for the year 2013.
Another option that you have to invest in gold but worried about the safety of it is to with GOLD Exchange Traded Funds (ETF). This is similar to buying a mutual funds where in all your investment will be hedged on the GOLD, however the only drawback is that you never get to see the gold in its physical form. However, using the GOLD ETF, you can do trading anytime from anywhere and not have to worry about the purity of the metal or worry about any form of cheating that you may encounter while buying it from a not so reputable GOLD retailer.
There is one more option to invest in ETF indirectly, by investing in mutual funds that are intended to solely purchase ETFs. These mutual funds are normally called the Gold Savings Funds. However, this is better avoided as there will be ab additional surcharge on top of the charges applicable while buying the ETFs, thereby reducing your total profitable income by investing in GOLD. If you are still interested with this Gold Savings Funds, you can checkout with some of the well known mutual fund providers like: Birla Sun Life Gold, HDFC GOLD etc.
Post a Comment