The exchange-traded fund of physical gold refers to the gold fund listed on the exchange, which is based on standardized physical gold and can be used to purchase and redeem fund shares. Gold exchange traded funds are financial instruments that mainly track the fluctuation of spot gold prices, and can be traded in the securities market.

1, the development of global gold ETF

In 2003, the world's first gold ETF, Gold Bar Securities, was listed on the Australian Stock Exchange. As Australia is not a world financial center such as new york and London, people are not familiar with gold ETF, and this product was not sought after by investors at that time. It was not until 2004 that the American SPDR Gold Trust Fund was listed on the New York Stock Exchange that the gold ETF was really known and attracted widespread attention. Subsequently, Britain, France and other countries have launched gold ETFs, and the gold ETF market has entered a period of rapid growth.

Among them, large-scale gold ETFs include SPDR Gold Trust and iShares COMEX Gold Trust listed on the New York Stock Exchange, with the scale of 48.64 billion US dollars and 3.46 billion US dollars respectively, and gold bars ETF and ETFs physical gold listed on the London Stock Exchange with the scale of 4.67 billion US dollars and 4.83 billion US dollars respectively.

2. Advantages of gold ETF

Compared with conventional gold investment methods, gold ETF has its own advantages in the following aspects:

Convenient transaction. Gold exchange traded funds are listed on stock exchanges, such as SPDR Gold Trust (GLD) on new york Stock Exchange and Gold Bar Securities (GBS) on London Stock Exchange. Investors can trade gold ETFs as easily as buying and selling stocks.

Keep it safe. Investors buying fund shares is equal to holding gold spot. These gold are usually delivered by the deliverable gold bars of the London Gold and Silver Exchange and deposited in the fund custodian's vault, which is extremely safe.

The transaction cost is low. Investors don't need gold custody fee, custody fee and insurance fee to buy gold ETF, and the management fee is generally around 0.4%, which has obvious advantages compared with other investment methods of 2%-3%.

Strong liquidity. Gold ETF has primary and secondary markets. At the same time, there are also market agents or market makers active in market transactions. In addition, the stock of gold ETF is huge, and the liquidity of trading is greatly guaranteed.

Transparent trading. Global gold trading is 24 hours, and the price is very transparent.