I’ve been thinking recently about gold investment, and I’ve found that this topic is more complicated than I imagined. A lot of people ask me where to buy gold more cost-effectively—but there’s no absolute answer. It entirely depends on how you want to play it.

Let’s start with the current situation. Gold prices have indeed fluctuated a lot over the past few years. From 2022 to 2023, they moved around between 1700 and 2000 USD. Then in 2024, they began to soar all the way up. This was mainly driven by growing expectations of U.S. interest rate cuts, rising geopolitical risks, and global central banks going on a buying spree for gold (last year’s gold purchases exceeded 1000 tons), which directly pushed the gold price to 2700 USD. As of now, it has already surged to above 3700 USD. Some institutions predict that by mid-2026 it may approach 4000 USD. However, honestly, short-term gold price movements are really hard to predict—there are too many influencing factors.

I look at gold investment in two main categories. If you want to hold long-term for value preservation, the key is to find a good entry point—don’t wait until prices have risen and then regret it. In this situation, you can consider buying physical gold, a gold savings passbook, or a Gold ETF. But if you want to profit from short-term trading by capturing the price spread, and you’re willing to take market risk, then gold futures and Gold CFDs may be a better fit for you.

As for where to buy gold, I’ll start with physical gold. If you’re buying gold bars, Taiwanese banks are a good option. They’re safe and reliable, and their fees are relatively low. However, physical gold has a problem: it doesn’t generate interest. You also have to pay for storage, and liquidity is not great. It’s easy to buy but hard to sell. On top of that, if your transactions exceed 50,000 New Taiwan dollars, you have to declare income tax—so the cost is actually not low. Therefore, physical gold is more suitable for collection and hedging, not the most ideal investment product.

A gold savings passbook is more convenient. The bank stores it for you, so you don’t have to keep it yourself. Taiwanese banks, as well as E.SUN and Yuanta, all offer this service. Buying with TWD means you have to take exchange-rate risk; buying with foreign currency means you pay for currency exchange costs. But overall, the fees are at a moderate level. The downside is that you can only buy low and sell high, and trading is limited to the bank’s business hours—frequent buying and selling will accumulate quite a bit of cost. It’s suitable for people who want low-cost long-term investment and don’t trade often.

Gold ETFs have even lower barriers, and they’re easy to buy and sell. For Taiwan stocks, there’s 00635U; for U.S. stocks, there are GLD and IAU. They have good liquidity and relatively low management fees. But they can only be used for long positions and can’t be used to short-sell, so they’re suitable for beginners and retail investors who want to invest long term.

If you want a more flexible way to trade, that’s where gold futures and Gold CFDs come in. Futures allow two-way trading, and you can operate them almost 24 hours a day. Leverage can amplify capital efficiency. The downside is that there is an expiration date, so you need to roll over into new contracts, and the risk from leverage is also higher. Gold CFDs are even more flexible: there’s no expiration date, the minimum margin requirement is lower, and the trading threshold is very low.

I think the key is to figure out your own investment goal. If you want to preserve value and hedge, choose physical gold or a Gold ETF. If you want to profit from price spreads, consider futures or CFDs—but you must have a risk-management awareness regarding your capital. Where to buy gold isn’t actually the most important question. What matters is choosing the investment method that fits you.

By the way, why has gold always been so popular? Because it really is a value-preserving asset. It has a global investment market. Every time the market is turbulent or inflation heats up, people naturally think of gold. Institutional investors generally allocate at least 10% of their portfolios to gold—this is the reason. In the year the Russia-Ukraine war broke out, the gold price directly surged to 2069 USD. Recently, it has also hit new highs again, reflecting the market’s systemic risks. So gold can be both a long-term hedging tool and a target for short-term trading.