New Physical ETF To Hold Gold In Asia

There are a lot of gold ETFs now, although the SPDR Gold Shares Trust (GLD) is by far and away the biggest. Nowadays, a new gold ETF has to have a special feature to distinguish it from the pack; Sprott's Physical Gold Trust, which has a limited provision for large shareholders to take delivery of the underlying gold, is an example. The feature that the new Physical Asian Gold Shares ETF has is its gold is to be stored in Singapore.

“The importance of Singapore being a location for custody is that Singapore is often the gateway to Asia and, like Switzerland, is widely considered a neutral country,” Fred Jheon, managing director of product development at ETF Securities, said in a telephone conference before the ETF launching.

The expense ratio of 0.39% is slightly below GLD's, but is far from being the best in the pack. It remains to be seen whether or not the "Singapore advantage" gets people to buy in.