iShares Physical Gold ISA
This ETC fund provides direct investment into gold through physical replication. The fund has an ongoing charge of 0.15%.
You can invest in this fund via an ISA through investor platforms including:
Fidelity
Hargreaves Lansdown
Interactive Investor
AJ Bell
How does an ETC work?
ETCs enable investors to track an individual, or collection of, commodities or currencies.
ETCs follow the price of metals, oil, agricultural products or exchange rates either directly, or by tracking an index of derivatives.
The fund performance of an ETC is typically based either on the spot price (price for the immediate supply) or the future price (price for the supply in the future) of a single commodity e.g. gold or a basket of commodities.
What is the difference between an ETC and an ETF?
If you are looking to invest in a commodity such as gold you will need to buy an ETC (exchange-traded commodities) which includes as well as precious metals, industrial metals, oil, natural gas, soft commodities and livestock.
ETCs are traded on the stock exchange just like ETFs. There is an important difference as an investor you need to understand - capital invested in an ETC is not a fund asset that is protected if the issuer becomes insolvent.
ETC concerns a debenture of the ETC provider.
The investor has an issuer risk in case of an ETC as compared to ETF. With a physical backed ETC the issuer risk is eliminated as the precious metal in this case gold, is held as gold bars by a trustee.
How do I invest in an iShares ETC ISA?
You can invest in iShares ETcs via a platform provider.
Investment Platforms include:
- Fidelity - Through the Fidelity platform once you set up an investment account you can invest in a wide range of iShares ETFs
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Hargreaves Lansdown - Provide a list of popular iShares ETFs their clients are buying at any given time.They provide access to most major EFT providers.
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AJ Bell - With AJ Bell you can invest in ETF providers such as Amundi, Franklin, HSBC and Invesco. AJ Bell provides a screening tool to allow you to drill down to the ETF that might best suit you.
