/biz/ - Business & Finance

>>54883385
>incorporating precious metal ETF's into my portfolio?
ETFs are mostly just paper assets that try to track metals. If something really bad happens they might fail to follow physical or even liquidate themselves while physical rises. Therefore ETFs should be used as trading vehicles you'll get out of when you need to, not as protection against the end of the world. If you want the latter, or you want to buy and hold forever, you'll need physical.

If you do want a trading vehicle you can easily take profits on, ETFs make sense. Watch out for the difference between an ETF and an ETN, since ETNs are at more risk of dying unexpectedly. There are a few ETFs that allow redemptions for physical metal, like PHYS and OUNZ. Even if you don't plan on actually redeeming, the feature is a canary that lets you know it's time to sell if they ever remove the redemption feature. It's also a deterrent against shenanigans like when GLD was storing gold with HSBC, and CNBC went to inspect the gold, held a bar up to the camera, and its serial number was actually owned by a different company that had another gold fund. Search for serial number ZJ6752 for details.

However, GLD has a liquid options market and it can track prices more accurately than PHYS under normal circumstances. The expense ratios vary too: GLD 0.4%, OUNZ 0.25%, GLDM 0.1%. GLDM is the budget version of GLD. The various ETFs also have different tax rules, so check the tax properties before making a big purchase. Silver ETFs are basically the same situations with different names.