While it may not feel like it to most gold investors, the end of week uptick in gold was right on cue with the 20-year seasonal pattern for the yellow metal:
Moreover, going back to 1975 gold has on average achieved more than a 4% gain between July and October (not including last year which saw gold suffer a more than 10% drop between July and October):
This bullish seasonality combined with a bullish dynamic in gold futures positioning offers investors favorable odds in the short-to-medium term while picking up gold near multi-year lows. Here are the two primary ways that I am advising people to invest in gold without having to deal with paying large premiums above the spot price (4-6%) and storing bullion coins in a safety deposit box:
- Buy the GLD exchange-traded fund in a brokerage account (offers tremendous liquidity with a .39% annual expense ratio)
- Open a BitGold account which allows one to buy gold within 1% of the spot price while having full access to the funds for payments (free to transfer funds to other BitGold account holders or for a 1% transaction fee using a debit card) and the ability to withdraw gold in physical form in either 10 gram or 1 kilogram increments
While some investors have a strong preference for ‘physical gold’ (bars and coins as opposed to financial products), I invite everyone to try the extremely user friendly BitGold platform and those investors who prefer physical gold can withdraw 1 kilogram bars for a smaller net cost than other platform or dealer that I know of.