August 9, 2017 9:46 am

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Tim Price: This partly depends on why you’re buying gold in the first place, assuming you don’t have some already. If you’re buying it as portfolio insurance, or as insurance against systemic risk or against disorderly inflation, you should probably start by buying physical bullion. In the Fail Safe Portfolio we start with Gold Bullion Securities, which holds physical bullion.

If you’re then interested in the possibility of making capital gains above and beyond those consistent from a rise in the gold price, you can then start looking at gold mining stocks as well – and in the Fail Safe Portfolio we use the iShares Gold Producers ETF in order to keep costs low. But there are clearly other funds that invest in gold mining companies, or if you have the risk appetite you could consider individual stocks too.

We’re using ETFs here, and diversified funds, in order to spread the risks and keep costs relatively low. But I think it makes sense to own both bullion and equity interests too – I always like diversification.