What are your thoughts/opinion on investing gold ETF, such as SPDR gold shares, vs gold solely in bullion? (ps: I am new to investing)

Investing in Gold ETF or Gold bullion itself has its own pros and cons such as:

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Gold ETF

Pros

• no need to have extra security to keep your gold purchases such as getting safety deposit box
• You can easily sell the instrument back to the market as per the market price you want for it.
• You dont need to worry about the legitimacy of your instrument (i.e. is it really the quality of gold you are claiming it to be) when selling it.
• You can sell parts of your position back in the market if you want to.

Cons

• you'll be exposed to your brokers fees and charges both when buying and keeping your instruments (i.e. whether via CDP or your broker)
• you dont have actually a physical ownership of an actual Gold object and everything is only paper. That is if for some reason the whole financial system goes upside down and we revert back to barter system, you cant barter this instrument.

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Gold Bullion

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Pros

• You can actually hold and see the physical gold object you bought
• You can trade it as it is say when the whole financial system collapses.

Cons

• you have to find a safe place to keep your gold,else it might get stollen
• You may have difficulties in selling this back to the market specially if you open it up from its packaging. I heard say you bought it from UOB, it comes in a sealed pack. Violate that seal and UOB might not buy it back from you (i heard only)
• Obviously you need to prove to the buyer that what you got is a true gold and its purity is as good as you are advertising it to be.
• You have to sell it as a whole and i dont think you can chop it up in small pieces and sell it off. Probably you can but you may not get a good price for them.

• if i really want to invest in gold. I will go for gold miners ETF.
• it will be more volatile. But you can at least get dividend while you holding it.
• But holding gold. U need to buy at low price, u dont DCA. Else it is really "expensive" in term of opportunity cost.
• While holding gold bullion, when u buy/sell, the shop will always want to earn $$$. So u will never get the actual price of gold.

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