How can an Indian investor invest in foreign gold? Is there any mutual fund, or ETF we can invest through?
check out spdr gold shares and ishares gold trust. just curious, what benefits do you see doing this?
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@AJ_K No ONE will never invest gold in USA - Gold price is increasing 3X only in India
because
- Rupee is super deprecation here - that benefit you can get in India
- Govt increasing Tax In india
- International gold price movement also you can et in India
then why you need to invest in USA
@TitanTrader @TradeB2B Thank you for your responses. I’m already invested in RBI bonds. I want to diversify my portfolio & want to invest in gold also. Instead of buying SGB which is also backed by RBI, I want to invest in gold not related to Indian government. Just reducing my risk profile.
Isn’t gold traded internationally?
would it matter if we purchase gold etf / Mf / bonds in India or foreign countries ?
Hi AJ, thanks for the information. But how do you invest in foreign gold assets ? Via Charles shwab/ few other brokers? Still you’d have to have an Indian bank account for remittances and withdrawals right ?
@Deva1 I think Indians can buy US stocks through select Indian brokers. May be US based gold ETFs can be purchased through them. Yes, you need Indian account to remit. For withdrawing, if there are unforseen events and you cannot withdraw to Indian account, may be the ETF will allow withdrawal to another account.
I’m still trying to figure out how to invest in gold ETFs of countries like Australia, Canada, etc.
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When RBI bonds has sovereign guarantee I do not think there is a need to further diversify. The other alternative is to buy physcial gold and keep it in locker which is not a great idea.
This is rupee denominated and backed by “India” Sovereign.
It appears that OP wants to divest themselves away from the Indian rupee,
and is looking for options to de-link some of their wealth from the Indian rupee,
perhaps options backed by other sovereigns (eg. the US Govt.).
After one has accumulated enough wealth to last one a lifetime,
i think it makes sense to look into such investments
to handle even extremely rare “black-swan” scenarios.
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Understood, but Gold price is linked to USD. Long time back, I saw an interview given by Mr.Feroze Aziz of Anand Rathi Wealth who mentioned that the returns that Indian get from investing in gold is mainly due to currency depreciation of INR.
As Gold is priced in USD, he will still get the INR equivalent of USD on that day. If the issue is Trust deficit, then I can understand, but can he open USD or FCY account abroad being a resident Indian - Mr.Feroze had also mentioned that since resident Indians could not book USD deposits for their children higher education abroad, investing in gold was an alternative to hedge against INR currency depreciation.
@cvs @neha1101 Actually I’m planning to invest in gold just for its intrinsic value. No currency play involved. In case currency depreciates, thats just a bonus for gold holders. Gold, has given a return of around 9 to 10 percent over the last 20 years.
The only reason I want to invest in foreign gold is that, since part of the investment is already in India, the other part could be held elsewhere for reducing any unforseen risks like geopolitical risks, financial risks, etc. Just a diversification play.
Since, most things are being done online now, I was just enquiring if there was any easy method to invest in foreign gold.
p.s.- I don’t have much wealth. 
Just looking to diversify, if its not too much trouble.
@AJ_K i am investing in edelweiss gold and silver ETF FOF - because silver will go up 1 % more then gold - in this fund there is 50% Gold and 50% silver , i already shown the graph
i personally investing in this last one year - got good return and perfect hedging also for my portfolio - if you happy about this then consider
Hmmm… that’s very insightful! 
Looking around for the historical price of Gold in USD, it appears that -
- for the past 20 years,
- Gold has appreciated at 8-9% (in terms of USD).
- for the 20 years before that,
- Gold was mostly flat, and even slightly negative at times.
Source: goldprice.org
Along the same lines,
comparing Gold-USD and Gold-INR,
it appears that Gold-USD doesn’t provide much appreciation compared to Gold-INR.
Source: freefincal.com
So, investing in Gold outside India (eg. in the US) seems like a good diversification play,
as long as one is willing to accept that
the Gold held outside India may not appreciate the same as investing in Gold in India.
…at which point,
one might as well invest in foreign Govt. bonds for such diversification.
Right?
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Hi, there are FOFs that does it as well. But I still don’t get the point about USD INR conversion rate here. The Graph of gold in India and in the US show same pattern with US underperforming .
Let’s say if I invested 10000 in goldbees and in a Gold FOF both funds and at a return of 8% in both in one year, I’d suppose I get the same value . Right? Or does it get converted back to INR in case of the FOF?
Situation has changed in recent times due to geopolitical concerns. Gold returns were flat because it was the time of delinking currency value from gold. Now countries have realised that the most important “currency reserve” is gold. Accepted by one & all since ancient times.
Foreign Govt. bonds are linked to their respective currencies. Unless, there is some foreign govt. gold bond like the one we have in India - SGB. Haven’t come across that yet.
You are right. It makes no difference to gold which currency you buy it in. The only reason gold-inr seems to give better returns is because the INR depreciated with relation to USD. Gold has its own value which everyone, for sake of international standardisation, denotes primarily in USD.
The graphs shows
how Gold-INR outperforms Gold-USD
by variable amounts at different times…
…the performance offset between the 2
correlating to the INR depreciation w.r.t. USD at those respective times
in the recent decades.