Making sense of gold investment / Dr. Dahlia Ibrahim and Dr. Zuraidah Mohamed Isa

Most investors will resort to investment tools such as savings, fixed deposit, shares and mutual funds to get more value to their investment portfolio. As the world is facing critical economic unrest, investors start to divert to other alternatives such as crypto, gold or even silver. At present, the most attention gainer goes to gold. It goes without saying that gold has become a fascination to most people regardless of genders. To put it bluntly, gold is a unique commodity where it does not get used up. Most often, gold is converted into jewelry, coins, and used in art. As a matter of fact, Hayes (2022) opined that gold is a precious metal that is permanent due to its chemical composition that cannot be wasted. Conservatively, those who want to invest in gold will go into the stock market by purchasing shares of gold mining companies where profit is gained through the rise of gold prices. In a bull market, this can be a tempting strategy. Currently, investors have the option to invest in real gold rather than shares in gold companies. Due to a few drawbacks, investors who are used to investing in gold-related shares find it difficult to invest in actual gold such as bullion, coins, and jewelry. First, gold bullion is sold in bars that typically weigh 25 grams to 25000 grams and can be extremely expensive. Investors looking to make significant profits are the main ones who target it. The biggest flaw in gold bars is their bulk, which makes it challenging to liquidate them in smaller amounts. One cannot just remove a portion of the gold bar to sell. If one wants to sell a single bar, they must liquidate it completely. Second, the smaller gold coins range in price from hundreds to thousands of ringgit and weigh between 2.5 and 25 grams. Individually manufactured gold coins are more genuine and valuable because of this. Due to this, it is more expensive than gold bars. Third, jewelry is very popular among ladies. Pure gold is not used in jewelry. Mostly, it is a blend of gold and silver. Jewelry's value is constantly changing. It all depends on whether the jewelry is broken or scuffed. If this occurs, the sellback price will be less than the cost of the original purchase (Rahim, 2021). However, owning actual gold offers advantages of its own. A few benefits of bullion or gold bars include their high liquidity, ease of storage, and lower price when compared to gold coins. In terms of gold coins, they are simple to keep and liquidate. The gold coin's worth increases if it is rare, which is what makes it so alluring. Last but not least, jewelry's key benefit is that it is a common accessory among women, making it easy to buy at any jewelry shop. The benefits and drawbacks of actual gold are outlined in Table 1 below.