It is just your normal trading fees. Annual management fee is around 0.8% as I have read somewhere before.

Since the IPO closing of 1.74 to current price of 1.945 (19 months), the return is only 11.78%, with most of the gains coming from June 2019 onward. Might not be worth to look at if gold price is going to be volatile.

Thank you for your clarification on the annual management fee.

"The stock is 99% invested in real physical gold bars. So performance will track price of gold obviously"
This one I agree. So coming back to the direction of spot gold price. The swing is too wild if we look at the previous 10Yr chart. No doubt that there is a chance to hit one of the up cycles of gold price, but that will be during a time of recession. If we take a look at the current gold price, it is at it's all-time high right now. I believe that the recent surge in gold price is due to China's buying spree since the start of the year.

The questions we need to ask ourselves are, how long can it hold at its current valuation, how long is our big brother China going to sustain their buying spree, and the most fundamental question would be how long will the US keep its interest rate low?

Thank you for sharing your insights, and yes the past 20 years chart did tell a very interesting picture, but I am not going to go that far as we know gold price will never rally up in that way again (it was a huge 400% surge over the period). From where we are, a steady 5% increment in price annually is good enough, but then again we wouldn't know what is going to happen over the next 5 years or so.

US re-election is coming next year, so things might get interesting with the China-US rivalry. If he losses office, well it wouldn't take a long time for the new Government to reverse the damage Trump did with China. So on to your claim that this is going to be a long drawn affair, I'd say we'll let the US voters to decide if they would like to see this rivalry persist.

While I agree that US would have its first rate cut in years, but would this short-term rate cut spur a long-term rally of the gold price? It is highly unlikely as Fed will need to step in once again with a rate hike if inflation rises too rapidly due to cheap credit. So when that happens, gold would become more of a speculative tool rather than a hedging tool.

One downside of this GOLDETF is its very low liquidity. One is "forced" to liquidate it at a cheap price or stick with the stock through its ups and downs. And the fact that is pays no dividends, the only way to earn a decent profit from this ETF is if the price could achieve a compounded growth rate of 5% (which is again, unlikely unless the US is hit with another big recession). As compared to my stocks portfolio, I would be able to sleep better at night as I know that my stocks would still continue giving me dividends for years to come even if the price compressed temporarily.

Wow, 10% of total portfolio? That is a bit too much, isn't it?
Then I would have many sleepless nights afterwards. Haha.

I still cannot take that kind of risk to have such a high exposure to gold. Maybe small amount like RM10k, probably is still ok, but to put 10% of my portfolio in gold holdings, not a good idea at this current condition. That would mean sacrificing my stable dividends in exchange for something uncertain.

Well, I would not speculate if a crisis or recession is coming or not as I am not an economist. So my views of the economical health are not important. But what I am saying is that my defensive portfolio is able to withstand a recession/crisis in the US. Well IF a recession/crisis was to happen, I could still buy gold then and ride with it. But right now with no clearer sign of it, I would not risk my cash earning nothing.

My portfolio is made up of quality dividend stocks that constantly pay out good dividends. Their businesses are quite resilient to market conditions. During a crisis, their share prices may be affected, but the core business might not be affected a lot. Hence is would be business as usual and these stocks are able to pay me dividends as usual. I earn by holding on to my stocks, not by selling them.

There is still buying opportunity for gold during a crisis, as the price would keep rising. It is not going to stop appreciating as people are still going to keep accumulating gold during a crisis. It is a safer bet to buy gold at the first obvious sign of a crisis. But for now, the sign isn't clear enough to warrant a rush to buy.

That is a good analogy there, and the 10-0-0 would be me
But I wouldn't mind staying 10-0-0 even if market changes for the better, as long as I am still earning my target yield from my portfolio. I would just like to build more passive income right now, with the first target which is to achieve a passive income of at least 50% of my gross salary. At my current age, it is not a good time for me to go aggressive on my portfolio anymore. Time to play defensive on my current holdings and grow it steadily.

Oh, in that case well I think as of now I am more of 2-8-0, as 20% is held in cash for any short term opportunity, and 80% in dividend yielding stocks. My cash holdings could be reduced to about 10% once I utilise the other part of it to fund a business start up (wonder if that would be considered high risk).

So yeah, I might consider a little bit in gold (probably RM10k in it) if I can achieve my first hurdle sooner than expected. Until that happens, I would like put everything I have into those boring dividend stocks to hit my target.

By the way, thank you for sharing this. Keep up the good work in updating us here so we can get informed of the latest changes

30% is considered low risk, last year MKE predicted a 40% chance of a global recession. Once it hits 60% chance then it is considered risky.

Oh my, I hope we would not see that too soon

Few ways one can buy and hold USD:

1. Buy physical USD cash and keep (the most common way)
2. Open a foreign currency deposit account (many banks do offer this)
3. Forex trading platforms (usually for short term trading based on contract)

I have no foreign currency deposit account, I am only keeping some USD in physical cash for now as my holding of USD is very small. I am increasing my holdings in SGD though.

I do not quite understand your question. But if you are asking me how much interest am I receiving on SGD, I can tell you it is very low at 1.5% only. But the reason I am transferring my money to SG apart from currency hedging is to invest my money in SG. So I don't mind the low interest rate as it only acts as a intermediary account.

I can only open a Sg account easily without a employment permit, whereas it is impossible for me to open a US account without working there. So I chose Sg, and another factor is due to its close proximity to Malaysia, I can get to "see" my money easier.

All the info you need is in here https://forum.lowyat.net/topic/1440794 and any further questions regarding the Sg bank account should be posted there. This is GOLDETF thread and any other discussion that deviates from the topic should end right here.

Congrats on your gold ETF appreciation. Guess you have made quite a decent profit by now.

Also thank you for sharing the findings. It looks like their weightage of holdings in physical gold is 101.36% of their units in circulation at the moment. Any idea if they are still accumulating more physical gold?