Q: You may have answered this question before. How does one buy gold instead of gold but trades like a stock -- liquid and is 100% correlated to the price of spot gold
5i Research Answer:
The best and usually cheapest and easiest way is to buy gold through an ETF or mutal fund trust. Our favourite is PHYS, which very closely tracks the gold price. Note any ETF may not match gold exactly, but PHYS has a clause where investors of large amounts (minimums) can exchange units for physical gold. This keeps the unit price very close to spot gold prices because if there is too much variability and a discount then unit holders are tempted to redeem. If the discount widens then buyers come in, redeem for bullion, and profit by selling the acquired gold.