Gold prices have been on an amazing run in 2020. It has surged from USD 1,550 to reach USD 1,800 (Source: goldprice.org) in November 2020. Increasingly, investors also recognise the importance of having gold in their portfolios. When it comes to gold investments, investors are spoilt for choice since there are various platforms available in the market. We researched across the various platforms to determine the most cost-effective and efficient way of investing in gold.
Comparison of Various Platforms for Gold Investments
Here is a comparison of the common platforms available for gold investments on key metrics such as transaction fee, storage fee, etc.
Everest Gold
Everest Gold’s digital trading platform is the first-of-its-kind to introduce real gold bullions broken down into digital gold units called Everest Gold Units (EGUs), that allows gold investors to trade from as low as 0.01grams. Every EGU is 100% backed by real gold and matched on a 1:1 basis. Investors can accumulate their EGUs and exchange them for physical gold.
The minimum capital to trade starts from USD 0.60, the equivalent of 1 EGU, making it highly affordable for everyone. Moreover, its users enjoy fairer prices without paying high premiums commonly levied by retail banks. Fees are non-existent since there is no transaction fee and storage fee. The combination of no fees and fair price offers investors the chance to maximise their profits. This stands in steep contrast to transaction and storage fees typically charged by retail banks and bullion dealers.
Everest Gold platform is also highly accessible and allows investors to trade gold 24/7 on the mobile app. Such instantaneous liquidity is another attribute not usually offered by traditional retail banks and bullion dealers.
Everest Gold is available for download on Android, iOS and accessible from desktop.
There’s probably never a better time than now to invest in gold. Gold price has been on a steady growth path not just in the past 5 years. This year alone, price of gold has increased 25% from US$1,520 to US$1,900 beginning October (Source: Goldprice.org). This shows that the average man is capable of growing their wealth by investing in gold. How gold has performed recently underlies the importance of having gold in your investment portfolio.
Portfolio Diversification
Countless academics and investment gurus have reiterated the importance of portfolio diversification. Gold serves this purpose very well as it has a historical negative correlation to stocks and other financial instruments. As recent as the last economic crisis, equities fell across the board while gold performed strongly as investors flock to safe-haven assets. Gold as an investment is not closely correlated to other financial instruments and having gold in your investment portfolio reduces overall volatility and risk.
Hedge Against Inflation
While the price of gold may be volatile in the short term, it has always maintained its value over the long term. This underlies its utility as a good store of value. Gold price tends to rise when the cost of living increases. Therefore, gold serves as a very useful hedge against inflation and erosion of major currencies. This advantage of gold is so ingrained that it is very common for gold to be passed on and wealth preserved from one generation to the next.
Buy and Sell Gold With Just A Few Clicks on Everest Gold
Image credits: Everest Gold
Having outlined the importance of having gold in your investment portfolio, you can actually start buying and selling gold with just a few clicks on Everest Gold app—a digital gold trading platform in Asia that is backed by 100% real gold. It is a ‘first-of-its-kind’ trading platform that allows retail investors to safely buy and sell gold online. Here are some of the advantages of trading gold on the Everest Gold platform:
Hassle-free trading. Trade anytime, anywhere at your convenience.
Highly accessible. The minimum to trade at only 0.01 gram.
Highly affordable. Investors enjoy fairer prices than gold traded in banks without paying high premiums.
Zero transaction fee. No hidden costs.
With no transaction fees payable and a higher buy-in price, you can massively improve your investment returns simply by trading gold on the Everest Gold platform today.
Moreover, test your skills at Everest Gold’s trading competitions and stand to win prizes worth a total of more than $37,000 CapitaVouchers! The next round of competition will be held on 23-29 October 2020. More information can be found here.
Everest Gold will be giving 300,000 reward points (worth S$40) for every new sign-up upon successful account verification. Reward points can be exchanged for gold during GoldSubscription Events. Enter referral code “EGGOLD” when you register for your Everest Gold account. Promotion valid till 31 October 2020.
Right from the start, I commenced my gold investment journey with Everest Gold by downloading its mobile application. With the mobile app, it offers supreme convenience as I am able to trade 24/7 from the comfort of my home. This is something that banks cannot offer since gold has to be purchased over the counter.
The mobile app was designed with “ease of use” as the intention in mind as investors can access their investments anytime, anywhere. I really appreciate the instant liquidity and the option of trading on the go. It also negates the need for long hours of monitoring so that I can focus my time on other activities in life.
Low Investment Threshold
Whether it is purchasing gold jewellery or gold bullion from banks, the traditional way of investing in gold often involves high entry barriers. The amazing feature set by Everest Gold is that investment threshold starts from as low as 1 EGU= 0.01g of gold. This means that retail investors eager to get started on investing in gold no longer need to wait till a sizeable amount of funds have been accumulated before beginning.
Furthermore, any savvy investor would realise that fees eats into returns. The lower the fees, the higher the returns. Therefore, it definitely helps that there are no transaction fees involved when purchasing gold over the Everest Gold platform.
Safe and Secure
With all the amazing features outlined above, it is just as important to know that my investments will be safe and secure. At Everest Gold, all transactions are fully encrypted with the use of 256-bit SSL. This means that my transactions are safeguarded and personal information protected. Privacy is respected since it is compliant with requirements of the Personal Data Protection Act of Singapore.
I am also impressed with the robust verification process which is supplemented by biometric authentication. Prior to trading, a compulsory personal verification process is required to prevent financial fraud and identity theft. An auditor conducts regular audits to ensure the clear delineation of investor funds with Everest Gold’s own funds for business use. With stringent audits in place, all transactions at Everest Gold are transparent, constantly updated and fully accounted for.
Conclusion
As a retail investor, I am really glad that Everest Gold is here to streamline outdated procedures of investing in gold. In return, I know that I am getting higher liquidity, better efficiency and lower costs for my gold portfolio by trading and owning my gold on the Everest Gold platform.
In line with National Day, enter referral code “WAVTW” when you register your Everest Gold account and receive 55 SGD worth of reward points. Be rewarded with 400,000 reward points for each successful account verification. Reward points can be converted into EGU during Gold Subscription Events. Promotion is for users residing in Singapore only. Valid till 31 Aug 2020.
Everest Gold is a Singapore fintech company working to make gold trading and investment accessible and affordable for retail investors on a secure online platform. It employs advanced technology which allows clients to track real-time gold prices as they seamlessly build, invest, trade and sell their gold portfolios.
Investors do not need any specialised trading experience to yield higher profits when investing in gold via Everest Gold. Simply buy when the price of gold is low and sell when price is high to get instant profits! With zero transaction fees and no minimum amount required, take advantage of price movements to execute unlimited trades! Everest Gold is truly the most affordable and accessible platform for retail investors to start investing in gold today.
Even more reassuring is the fact that Everest Gold recognises that being able to invest in a safe and secure portfolio is often the utmost important criteria in the minds of investors. Therefore, it has made investment safety and security its top priorities. To ensure that its customers have peace of mind while trading gold, it has entered into a tripartite supervision agrrangement with Pacific Trustees Singapore and Malca-Amit. This ensures that no party can unilaterally exercise its rights over the gold. Here is how each party plays a part in ensuring investment safety for clients trading on Everest Gold’s platform.
Third Party Custodian
Pacific Trustees Singapore is appointed as the gold custodian in the Everest Gold and the appointment. After users purchased gold on the platform, the ownership of the gold is transferred to PTS. Investors can rest assured that Everest Gold has no authority over gold assets.
With over 25 years in business under the Pacific Trustees Group International, Pacific Trustees (Singapore) Ltd (“PTS”) has over 4 years of experience in the corporate and individual trust. PTS provides a comprehensive end to end clearing and Trustees services for global and domestic equities and fixed income securities. As a fully licensed Trust Company by Monetary Authority of Singapore, PTS has full capabilities to provide for full range of trust and other related services thereto for major domestic corporates and regional corporates and financial institutions.
Third Party Storage
Malca-Amit, an international vault chain established since 1963, provides storage of luxury goods for high net worth individuals and internationals banks. Its global team of experts have vast experience over logistics, security, customs house and special operations. Malca-Amit has over 70 offices in 40 countries worldwide and uses highly secured and strategically located facilities.
Gold purchased by customers on Everest Gold’s platform is fully insured and stored securely in Malca-Amit’s state of the art facility located in the Singapore Freeport.
Regular Audits by Professional Company
Everest Gold has appointed a professional firm, Crowe Horwath First Trust LLP (“Crowe Singapore”) to perform independent verification of its gold supply, gold reserves and gold collection, on a quarterly basis, in accordance with Singapore Standard on Related Services. This is to ensure amount of digital gold issued on the platform is equivalent to amount of physical gold stored in the vault.
Crowe Singapore is part of an international professional services network, Crowe Global. Ranked as the eighth largest global accounting network, Crowe Global consists of more than 200 independent accounting and advisory services firms in close to 130 countries around the world.
The tripartite supervision arrangement between Malca-Amit, Pacific Trustrees Singapore and Everest Gold will allow retail investors to trade safely and securely while building up their dream gold portfolio. Investing in gold has never been safer.
In line with this year’s National Day celebrations, Everest Gold will be giving 400,000 reward points (worth 55 SGD) for every new-sign up upon successful account verification. Reward points can be converted to gold during Gold Subscription Events. Enter referral code “WAVTW” when you register your Everest Gold account. Promotion valid from 8 to 31 Aug.
The arguments of having gold in your investment portfolio have already been well articulated by scholars, but do you know how to go about doing it in Singapore in a cost-efficient manner?
The traditional way of buying gold jewellery and passing it down to the next generation is highly cumbersome and costly. Purchasing gold bars from a bank and storing them in a vault will not be cheap either. Fret not, your chance to start building your own dream gold portfolio is finally here with the launch of Everest Gold in Singapore.
Traditional Ways Of Investing In Gold
The most traditional way of investing in gold is to purchase and store gold jewellery at home while waiting for capital appreciation. However, this is a costly way of investing in gold because of leakages such as workmanship costs and 7% GST on the purchase price.
The other way of investing in gold is to purchase gold from the banks. However, there is often a minimum quantity to purchase which may put it beyond the reach of retail investors who do not have a significant amount of money to set aside in the first place.
Purchasing gold directly from the banks is also not a cost-effective way of investing in gold because of the significant bid-ask spread and storage fee charged by the bank. Bid-ask spread at the bank could go as high as 30% while storage fees are often levied as a separate service charge at 0.25% of the current portfolio. All these fees significantly dilute the returns investors can potentially make from gold.
An Elegant and Tech-savvy Solution To Own And Trade Gold
To maximise your returns from investing in gold, you should own and trade gold on Everest Gold. Everest Gold is a fintech company working to make gold trading and investment accessible and affordable for retail investors on a secure online platform. Everest Gold uses 999.9 pure investment-grade gold. Its 1kg gold bars are obtained from Metalor Technologies Singapore Pte. Ltd, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Metalor Technologies International SA, the leading worldwide precious metals refiners based in Switzerland.
Everest Gold employs advanced technology which allows clients to track real-time gold prices as they seamlessly build, invest, trade and sell their gold portfolios. Here are the key cost advantages of using Everest Gold to invest in gold:
Affordable: No minimum amount required such that the capital investment is low. Start trading gold from as low as 0.01g of gold!
Trade with peace of mind: Your investment assets are fully insured.
Lower gold price: Benchmarked against international gold price, price of gold sold on Everest Gold is significantly lower than banks (USD$0.558 vs USD$0.783 per 0.01 of gold) during its Gold Subscription Event
Maximise Returns: No transaction fees mean all your principal are invested in the possible capital appreciation of gold
Accessible: 24/7 trade for instantaneous liquidity, something which the banks cannot provide
Additionally, investors do not need any specialised trading experience to yield higher profits when investing in gold via Everest Gold. Everest Gold is truly the most affordable and accessible platform for retail investors to start investing in gold today. Say no to workmanship cost, GST, high bid-ask spread and storage fees once you start investing in gold via Everest Gold.
Enter referral code “WAVTW” when you register your Everest Gold account. Be rewarded with 300,000 reward points (worth US$30) for each successful account verification. Promotion valid till 31 July 2020.
