A guide to precious metal investing

COMMODITIES

Nitesh Shah, analyst at ETF Securities, says exchange-traded products offer the easiest and most transparent way of investing in precious metals.

Collectively, precious metals offer investors an opportunity to invest in hard assets – something that is highly valued in the current environment of loose monetary policy, which has been blamed for eroding the value of major reserve currencies that many financial assets are held in. Investors can gain exposure to these metals by holding them physically (eg bars and coins), through the derivatives market (eg futures) or by holding exchange-traded products (ETPs), which themselves may be either physically-backed or derivatives-based. ETPs arguably offer the easiest and most transparent...