Spot price depends on who are you talking to. If you are talking to a jeweler, he would tell you that your gold spot price is the Retail price set by the Malaysian association.

If you are talking to a commodity trader, the gold spot price is the real-time gold price trading at a particular mercantile exchange. For example, US - Chicago Mercantile Exchange or New York Mercantile Exchange, Japan - Osaka Mercantile Exchange or Singapore - Singapore Mercatile Exchange.

If you are talking to a banker, the gold spot price is the previous day closing price for gold trading in US, most likely Chicago Merchantiile Exchange.

This post has been edited by Jollybee: Oct 7 2012, 12:45 AM

Example of investing 300g gold from UOB bank

300 gram of gold is equals to 9.646 troy ounce. One ounce = 31.1 gram. The gold spot price is Rm5,433 as of 8th Oct 2012, yesterday.
http://goldpricenetwork.com/goldprice/malaysia/

If you round it to 9.65 oz, you can buy 9 pieces of 1 ounce bullion coin + 1 piece of 1/2 ounce of bullion coin and 1 piece of 1/10 ounce of bullion coin + 1/20 ounce of bullion coin

The cheapest bullion coins sold by UOB are Singapore Lion, Australian Nugget and Canadian Maple Leaf.

Total investment = 9x Rm5,686 + Rm2,938 + Rm 667 + RM434 = RM55,213

Total investment per ounce = RM5,721

Premium paid % = Total investment per ounce - Spot price / Total investment per ounce x 100% = Rm5,721 - RM5,433/ Rm5,721 x 100% = 5.03%

Buying the smaller bullion coins or measurement like gram are more expensive than buying in one full ounce. I suggest you to just buy 9 pieces of 1 ounce bullion coin and the premium is only 4.44%.

The resale value is Rm5501 or 1.2% above spot value. You will lose 3.24 % if you buy and sell your investment yesterday. Therefore, you need to wait the spot value increase 3.24% to breakeven your investment. In another word, 3.24% is the buy sell spread for UOB gold trading.

UOB price list for bullion coin:
http://www1.uob.com.my/business/GMIM/GMIM_...ous_metals.html

This post has been edited by Jollybee: Oct 9 2012, 10:47 PM