Jasmine Birtles
Your money-making expert. Financial journalist, TV and radio personality.
Webinar: Why you should invest in gold and how to do it
Isobel Lawrance
29th Nov 2021
We recently hosted a webinar in partnership with The Royal Mint, in which we discussed why you should invest in gold and other money metals, and how to do so.
Our founder Jasmine Birtles hosted this webinar, alongside expert guests. She was joined by Andy Dickey, Divisional Director of Precious Metals at The Royal Mint, John Butler, an economic historian and author of The Golden Revolution and Charlie Morris, who is Chief Investment Officer at ByteTree Asset Management.
If you are interested in investing in money metals – you’ve come to the right place! You can watch the full webinar and read the summary points below.
- Can you buy physical gold and is it the best way to invest?
- Has gold become more popular with investors?
- What percentage of gold should people have in their portfolio?
- What about silver and platinum?
- Are there any tax advantages to owning sovereign?
- Why invest in gold?
- Are we in a period of stagflation?
- Where should I store my gold?
- How quickly can I sell back my gold?
- Should I invest in digi-gold or physical gold?
- What are ETFs/ETCs?
- Where is the best place to invest?
- What gives gold its solidity?
- Is there an annual fee to store gold at the royal mint?
- How much money should I invest in gold?
- Gold or bitcoin?
Can you buy physical gold and is it the best way to invest?
Andy says:
- You can buy gold, silver and platinum in any form you require
- It’s down to individual taste and personal situations
- The Royal Mint deals mainly in physical bouillon but there are also digital products
- They can be stored in The Royal Mint vault or sent to you
- We worked with approved couriers and everything sent out is fully insured for safety
- Orders over a certain value are hand delivered by The Royal Mint security team
- Due to increased customer numbers as the result of Covid, we have tried to create a range of products for all budgetary needs
Has gold become more popular with investors?
John says:
- Owning gold makes good financial sense
- It’s basic common sense to insure yourself – you insure your home not knowing when there will be a fire or you’ll be burgled, if at all – but you still get insurance because it’s sensical
- Owning gold is a form of diversification, safety, security and insurance
- Everybody should hold some – the question is, how much and in what form?
What percentage of gold should people have in their portfolio?
John says:
- There are multiple ways to approach this
- If you see gold as a core part of a sensible, diversified portfolio, take data and historical changes and run the numbers
- You can go back over 100 years and look at the data
- You can use this to recognise the base amount of gold you want to most efficiently diversify and protect a portfolio
- It can range between 10% and 20% – the large range is because it really depends on the type of financial environment you are in
Charlie says:
- My view is the value of gold only goes up
- It might take a year or even ten years ‘off’, but gold is always at an all-time high somewhere
- If you add gold to your portfolio, it introduces something different and reduces risk
- Anything from 8% is good, and you can increase that number
What about silver and platinum?
Charlie says:
- Gold is safest, but if you want something with a bit more risk you can silver and platinum
- Silver has a grand history like gold
- Silver and platinum are both cheaper than you’d expect it to be against gold at the moment
- Platinum only tends to take off when there’s increased usage of it industrially
Andy says:
- We see a different age demographic across the metals
- Silver is popular with younger investors, due to the lower access price and higher volatility
Are there any tax advantages to owning sovereign?
Andy says:
- Sovereigns and Britannias are classed as legal tender in the UK
- They are capital gains tax exempt
- Gold is VAT free
Why invest in gold?
John says:
- Gold price fluctuates and grows depending on the economic environment
- It can weather high and low stagflation, but it’s important to look at historical periods where gold rose and fell and work out why
- It is important to understand how government policy affects gold
- It diversifies a portfolio
Are we in a period of stagflation?
Charlie says:
- Inflation is high and the interest rate is very low.
- Gold did extremely well from 2018-2020, so it’s currently having a ‘rest’ after such a big surge
Where should I store my gold?
Andy says:
- It has to be your own choice
- You can either store it at home or in the bank
- You can store it with The Royal Mint in the vault
- Some customers want to have their bouillon in a physical form, some know it’s physical but want to store it elsewhere
- Either way, it is your legal product and you own it
- The Royal Mint charge 1% of the value of your product to store it
- The biggest security feature is secrecy!
How quickly can you sell back your gold?
Andy says:
- If you bought your gold through The Royal Mint and stored it in our vault, you can sell it almost immediately
- If you own digi-gold it’s almost immediate
- If you have the bouillon at home, it may take a little longer
Should I buy digi-gold or physical gold?
Charlie says:
- Buying physical gold is the best option for when you want to invest in the long term
- If you want to trade your gold and buy and sell it often, a digital wealth platform is best for this
Andy says:
- Any digi-gold you buy with The Royal Mint is digitally backed
- Our ETCs on the stock-exchange are also physically backed
What are ETFs/ETCs?
Andy says:
- Exchange Traded Funds/Commodities
Where is the best place to invest?
John says:
- Any reputable broker will enable access to gold funds and investments
- All major names will have at least a handful of relevant ETFs and ETCs that meet robust criteria
Jasmine says:
- It depends how much and how often you trade
- Most have different packages and offers
- It depends on monthly fees or costs per trade
- There is AJ Bell Youinvest, The Royal Mint, Interactive Investor, Fidelity, Hargreaves Lansdown, Charles Stanley
What gives gold its solidity?
John says:
- It is universally valued and has been throughout history
- It is valuable across cultures
- There is something in human nature that allows gold to retain its value
- There is something fundamentally appealing about this desired metal
- There’s always a market for gold, and the market is extremely liquid
- Even in the 2008 financial crash, the bonds and stocks markets seized up – the gold market ticked over as normal
Is there an annual fee to store gold at the royal mint?
Andy says:
- It’s an annual fee
- It’s a percentage of the value of the product you have stored with them
- Physical metal costs 1% per annum
- Digi-gold costs 0.5% per annum
How much money should I invest in gold?
Andy says:
- You should allocate a percentage of your portfolio to gold rather than a set amount
- The World Gold Council says 15% of your portfolio should be in gold as a safe haven amount
- Beyond that, it is whatever you can afford
Gold or bitcoin?
Charlie says:
- There are many differences
- Gold is physical and bitcoin is not
- Economically, they are very much the same
- Bitcoin was created around the idea of gold
- Bitcoin has a limited supply each year – 21 million
- Inflation on bitcoin is currently around 2% per year
- In terms of demand, they are different
- Gold is more widely accepted
- Gold totals $13 trillion globally, bitcoin totals $1 trillion
Very well explained.