In this gold investment guide, we explore why and when gold investing can be a good decision, and we compare the best ways to invest in gold. For buying physical gold with unequivocable ownership your options include coins or small bars and allocated gold bullion. Alternatively for gold exposure there are unallocated accounts, gold exchange-traded funds (gold ETFs or ETPs) or gold-backed stablecoin crypto tokens.
Using BullionVault you can benefit from the lowest costs for buying, selling and storing investment gold bullion. BullionVault is the world’s largest online investment gold service taking care of $7 billion for more than 120,000 users.
Why choose gold investing?
There are 3 main reasons why people invest in gold bullion: as insurance for their wider investments, to counter inflation, and because of its security as a physical asset.
Investment insurance: Gold prices have generally risen in extended periods of financial stress, when investors and wealth managers buy the metal to diversify and spread risk in their portfolio. So gold could make a good investment today if you think that stock markets, world trade, house prices or the value of your retirement savings are likely to lose value in the months or years ahead.
Inflation: Because gold is naturally rare, people often invest in bullion bars, coins or gold ETFs when consumer prices rise sharply, hitting the purchasing power of cash savings. Gold’s role as an ‘inflation hedge’ has worked best when interest rates lag behind the pace of inflation. Gold investing prices rose 20-fold in the 1970s but fell again in the 1980s when interest rates were then hiked above inflation.
Security: Unlike stocks and bonds or even cash in the bank, physical gold owned as your personal property is an investment which no-one else’s financial failure can take away. While you must ensure that it is safely stored and insured, history shows that gold has never devalued to zero. Today gold trades in a deeply liquid, truly global market where jewelry purchases often grow when investment demand slips, helping put a floor under prices.
If you’re still thinking about gold investment, and you are rationalizing what can be a difficult decision, we recommend further reading before you invest in gold.
How to Invest In Gold
BullionVault allows you to pay wholesale-market prices for investment gold, with no sales tax and no delivery delays or costs. Using professional bullion vaults means you pay the lowest storage and insurance fees. BullionVault’s live online platform lets you buy or sell 24/7 and instantly have funds back in your account, ready to be withdrawn, the moment you choose.
An additional benefit for BullionVault’s American users is that because their gold is in the form of large 400oz wholesale bars they can also hold it within an IRA as part of their retirement investments.
Is gold a good investment?
Gold is often recommended as a good investment because it can act as a form of insurance for wider portfolios, providing stability and protection when other assets like stocks and bonds face uncertainty or when inflation erodes the real value of currency.
While gold prices can fluctuate short-term, its long-term appeal as a safe haven remains strong, especially during geopolitical or economic crises, making it a popular choice for private investors, money managers and even central banks looking to diversify and preserve wealth.
What are the options for gold investment?
Because gold is a physical asset, the way you choose to invest in it raises questions you probably don’t think about when buying financial assets like shares or bonds or picking a bank account.
- What form do you want your gold investment to take?
- Can you compare prices to get a good deal?
- Where’s the best place to keep your gold?
- How will you store it?
- Will you need to buy insurance?
- How easy will it be to sell the type of gold you’ve chosen?
- Will you need to pay any tax when you buy or sell your investment in gold?
To answer all these points, this guide explains simple questions to consider, because making informed decisions today will make a big difference to your potential profits and protection from investing in gold.
Do you want to own your gold investment?
First, do you want to own gold as your personal property or will you be happy to just track the gold price by relying on a finance-industry product?
Gold ETFs go up and down with the price of gold. That’s because these investments, broadly known as an exchange-traded product (gold ETP) or sometimes an exchange-traded commodity (gold ETC), are backed by the value of bullion held in a bank vault.
You buy and sell gold ETP shares using a stockbroker. Some ETCs are created as “debt linked to physical gold” while other trust funds own gold, and you then own shares in the ETF. Either way, you won’t actually own any metal through a gold-backed ETP, yet you will be charged for its safekeeping.
Gold ETF fees range from 0.15% to 0.40% of your investment’s value each year, charged by slowly reducing the quantity of gold backing each of your shares. Note that any gold ETF shares you buy probably won’t belong to you either. That’s because, just as with any other stock-market shares you hold in a ‘nominee’ account, your broker will be the direct owner.
An alternative to gold ETPs is so-called “unallocated” gold. Investing this way gives you the gains (or losses) from the value of gold belonging to a bank or a bullion refinery. Because you don’t own the gold, you won’t pay for its storage or insurance. Your investment, however, is exposed to the bank or refinery’s financial survival, because you are one of their creditors. Technically speaking, you will be owed gold, rather than owning it.
How will you store your gold investment?
If you prefer the security of owning physical gold as your personal property, then the second step is to decide whether you want to keep your gold investment at home in your house, or will you use a specialist service to safeguard your bullion for you?
A decision to keep gold in your house will restrict you to buying ‘retail’ gold investment products. Whether as gold coins or small bars, these retail units can cost you significantly more than the value of their bullion content, and they will also return less than their bullion value when you sell. The gap between these purchase and sale prices, known as the ‘spread’, runs from 3-4% on gold kilobars (currently costing almost $135,000) through to 15% on some bullion coins.
Furthermore, hiding high-value assets in your house involves some difficult decisions around trust. You can’t claim insurance on stolen gold if you didn’t declare that you were holding it. But if you do declare that you are keeping gold at home, your insurers will probably demand that anything over a few thousand dollars-worth needs to be kept in an insurance-rated safe fitted by a professional. Your insurers will also likely raise the cost of your annual home insurance premiums.
One alternative is to rent a safe-deposit box, perhaps at your bank or with a company that provides lockers for storing your valuables. Prices vary widely, and you will also likely need to buy insurance for your investment gold on top.
It is also important to think about the work you will face when you decide to sell. Comparing prices when you buy gold coins or small investment bars is much easier than trying to shop around when you want to cash in. That’s especially true if you’re looking to bank the biggest gain you can when gold prices are high, because it’s likely that lots of other gold investors will also be rushing to sell their coins or small bars at the same time. Retail coin and bar dealers swamped by supply will naturally cut the price they’re willing to pay. You will also need to mail or carry your gold to the shop that’s buying it from you, adding costs and risk again.
Retail or wholesale: What is the best way to invest in gold?
If you feel that the investment costs, hassle and risk of keeping gold at home or in a nearby safe-deposit box make this option less desirable, then you are freed from the need to buy only small bars or coins. No matter the size of your initial gold investing outlay, vaulted bullion in the form of large, wholesale bars is a viable option to consider. The comparison table below shows the relative advantages and disadvantages of different ways to invest in gold.
Gold investment options comparison table
| Gold investment questions | BullionVault allocated gold | ETF | Jewelry | Coin & small bar | Gold-backed crypto tokens |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Do you own the physical gold? | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Unclear |
| Is the gold insured? | Yes | Not all of it | You need to arrange | You need to arrange | Unclear |
| Is the gold regularly checked by experts? | Yes | Not all of it | You need to arrange | You need to arrange | Unclear |
| Is it easy to see the buy & sell price (spread) at the same time? | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes |
| Costs to buy and sell | Low | Low | High | High | Low |
| Storage and related costs | Low | Low | High (home insurance or safe-deposit box) | High (home insurance or safe-deposit box) | None (see note*) |
| Can the gold be shipped to you? | Yes above 50 grams | Not with most ETPs | Yes | Yes | Only in 400-oz bars |
| When you sell is your money settled to you immediately? | Yes | Standard 1 or 2-day stock market delay | Only if you deliver to your buyer in person | Only if you deliver to your buyer in person | 1-day delay where not unclear |
| Can gold be held in a pension/IRA? | Yes | Yes | No | Depends on type | No |
* Paying a storage fee for the safe-keeping of physical assets has, in the past, been decisive in proving that an investor owned the property in law. So where no storage fee is charged, this evidence is lacking.
Benefits of investment in gold bullion
Investing in vaulted wholesale bullion carries three clear benefits over buying retail bars and coins.
Price: Large wholesale bars are the form out of which all other products are made, adding costs at each step of manufacturing, handling and distribution. For vaulted large-bar gold in contrast, trading spreads between buy and sell prices on BullionVault, the largest provider for private investment, run to 0.3% or less for as little as 1 gram at a time.
Liquidity: Because large bullion bars are the form out of which all other gold products are made, they are the units which the global wholesale market trades. Centered in London, with Zurich and New York among the other main hubs, this market turns over $100 billion or more in gold every day. It includes central banks, large gold dealers, specialist technology firms, jewelry manufacturers, ETF managers, bullion banks and sovereign wealth investment funds. BullionVault makes this market accessible 24/7, one gram at a time.
Security: Nowhere is safer for physical gold than a specialist bullion vault. Often sited within major airports to make international deliveries quick and safe, these vaults have armed response are rated so secure by the insurance industry that full cover costs a fraction of what you’d pay for insuring gold at home or in a safe-deposit box. On BullionVault, the cost of custody with insurance included runs as low as 0.01% of your investment per month ($4 per month minimum).
Is digital gold a good investment?
One development over the last 10 years has been so-called “gold-backed crypto”, also known as “tokenized gold”, “digital gold” or sometimes “gold-backed stablecoins”. But do you own any investment gold through a gold-backed crypto stablecoin?
The 2 largest providers both define their product as “A digital token, backed by physical gold”. Where anything is “backed” by gold, the investment is abstracted from the metal, which becomes a physical asset underlying a financial instrument. In this case, the investor owns the token, not the gold, and the token gains its value in the same way as unallocated accounts or gold ETPs are backed by gold but don’t give you any ownership of physical metal.
Importantly, none of the largest gold-backed stablecoins charge any storage or insurance fees, again matching the position of unallocated gold. In those investment accounts, the buyer is owed gold and does not own any metal. More secure allocated gold must always carry storage and insurance fees, and those fees have in the past been decisive in proving true ownership of physical assets where an investor’s title has needed confirming in law.
When is a good time to invest in gold bullion?
Gold bullion doesn’t pay any interest or dividends. So as with any other physical asset, the biggest profits from investing in gold come from buying low and selling high.
Trying to time the very bottom and very top in gold prices, however, can mean missing out on valuable gains in the meantime, most especially if gold is rising as other investment assets such as shares or house prices are struggling.
Once you decide to buy gold, how can you plan your investment to get the best value? Precious metal prices change on a minute-by-minute basis in the global wholesale market. So it is impossible for anyone to know with 100% certainty when is the best possible time to buy or sell precious metals.
Diversification fixes this, whether for gold or any other investment. That’s because savvy investors accept that future prices are unknowable, and so they replace the guess-work with a mix of investments. The proportions you choose for gold, shares, bonds and perhaps crypto will change as prices move up and down. So you simply need to rebalance your holdings, perhaps once a month or even just once a year, to return your investment portfolio to your intended split.
While 5-10% in gold is a common suggestion for a diversified investment portfolio, research by BullionVault has found that its users typically hold closer to 20% of their self-managed wealth in precious metals. That matches the proportion suggested by US investment bank Morgan Stanley’s chief investment officer in 2025, who urged asset managers to replace the traditional 60:40 split between stocks and bonds with a 60:20:20 portfolio split between stocks, bonds and gold.
Investors looking to trade gold more actively will constantly monitor the gold price as well as global news, international markets and macro-economic activity, choosing to grow their holdings on a price dip or bank a little profit on a spike. For the majority of investors, in contrast, gold’s primary appeal is as a form of long-term investment insurance for their wider portfolio, and over-trading can put any existing gains at risk.
What factors drive gold investment prices?
Upswings in gold prices have been driven by heavy investment demand, most of all from asset managers running large portfolios. Key moments likely to see gold investment rise like this include:
- When other investments start to lose value year after year
- When inflation increases faster than interest rates
- When your primary currency loses its purchasing power
- At times of economic uncertainty or political crisis
Because gold tends to perform well when other investments do badly, its price has tended to peak when economic sentiment hit rock-bottom. Such moments can make selling gold feel difficult, but if you are using gold to hedge against investment risk in other assets such as shares or bonds, then it makes sense to rebalance your holdings after significant price moves.
The fact that gold tends to ‘zig’ when other assets ‘zag’ also means that the very best time to invest in gold might be when economic sentiment is strongest and the precious metal isn’t making headlines.
Who invests in gold?
With more than 120,000 users worldwide, BullionVault has a wide customer-base of people choosing to invest in gold, from all backgrounds and of all ages. It ranges from new investors starting with $130 and making small monthly purchases through to family offices wanting to own several millions-worth of secure, insured bullion held ready for sale at full value.
The most common gold holding on BullionVault builds to around $15,000 in total, usually through a series of investment purchases made over several years. Talking to investors, we believe that tends to represent 10% of the wealth they manage for themselves, not including their home or any employer-provided pension products. Because gold often helps act as a form of insurance for a wider portfolio, it makes sense to have something to insure – whether that is shares, bonds, real estate or a combination. However, anyone can get started with investing in gold with BullionVault.
How BullionVault enables you to invest in gold in a cheaper, safer and easier way
Launched in 2005, BullionVault now cares for $7.2 billion in client property for more than 120,000 users worldwide. It enables you to invest in gold in 1-gram increments, all physically allocated within securely-vaulted wholesale Good Delivery bars refined and cast by the specialist refiners approved by industry body the LBMA. Importantly, all gold belonging to BullionVault users is held by independent vaults. The company itself does not own or operate these facilities. Instead it uses specialist facilities, and that separation is vital for the Daily Audit, a unique process which proves your property is where it should be – in full – each day.
The Daily Audit takes the full Bar Lists from the independent custodians, and it publishes them for you to study alongside a full list of each client’s holdings. The two totals match down to the last gram, showing that the investment bullion is fully allocated and eliminating the risk of ‘double counting’ (also known as ‘under vaulting’). This proof can only happen because the client records are held by BullionVault and they are independent from the bullion bar lists.
The bar lists cannot be falsified, because the specialist custodians (Brink’s, Loomis, Malca-Amit) see them posted in public on the Daily Audit. The client records cannot be falsified either, because each user also sees their investment holdings stated in public and can check that figure against the quantity they bought.
Your gold investment holding is anonymized on the Daily Audit, so that only you know which entry refers to your bullion. The whole process is also verified by BullionVault’s external, independent financial auditors (Armstrong Watson), who examine the procedures, confirm the arithmetic, and check with each of the vault operators (and also the banks holding client cash) that they did indeed issue the bar lists and statements published on a random selection of dates.
The auditors also receive a further third-party report – a full tally count and physical examination of all the gold and silver bars held for BullionVault Clients – from expert assayers (Alex Stewart International). Bringing together all these independent documents (the client records, the bar lists and bank statements, plus the vault inspection report) the auditors then publish their scrutiny of the Daily Audit on their own website, a site which BullionVault couldn’t hope to control.
Please Note: This analysis is published to inform your thinking, not lead it. Previous price trends are no guarantee of future performance. Before investing in any asset, you should seek financial advice if unsure about its suitability to your personal circumstances.
