As investing in stock market is becoming more and more risky, Australians have started to diversify their investment portfolio by making considerable investments in precious metals, like gold. This trend of buying gold bullion in Australia skyrocketed after the financial meltdown in 2008 that dragged all the stock market investments down.
It’s about time that you should also start thinking about making safe investments by buying gold bullion. Aside from buying gold bullion, Australians are into investing in gold by buying gold coins, and buying shares of the gold producing companies. However, nobody can deny the increase in trend of buying gold bullion.
Let’s discuss a few details of this increasing trend and see why people prefer buying gold bars.
The Increase in Demand in 2016
In Australia, the demand for buying gold rose to a three year high in the year 2016. This peak in the gold buying trend was aided by a keen appetite for investing in precious metals. According to the World Gold Council, precious metals are the new avenue where most of the investors are taking all their investments to. The reason for this is the stability of prices of precious metals that provides the investors more secure investment opportunities.
The World Total Demand for Gold
It’s not just Australia where the trend of buying gold bullion is reaching an all time high. It’s in fact the total world demand for gold that has gone high. According to a London based industry body, the total demand for gold advanced 2 percent to 4,309 tonnes when compared with the total demand for gold in the year 2015. However, there was a downward trend observed in the gold market during the last three months of the year 2016. This was when the global demand fell down by 11 percent to 994.1 tonnes when compared to the decline in 2015.
The New Gold Rush in Australia
Gold has been one of the Australia’s significant exports since the new gold rush in the country during 1970s and 1980s. As of the recent years, the demand for gold in Australia rose in the first, second and the third quarters of 2016. One of the reasons behind this increase was the inflows into the exchange traded funds (ETFs) – which allows an investor to invest in gold without trading on the futures market.
Why Australians Buy Gold Bars?
One of the biggest reasons that Australians are into buying gold bars is the ease of storage. It’s not like those old times when people used to buy big bricks of gold in the name of gold bullion or gold bars. Today, there are various sizes and weights of gold bars available that are very easy to store. You just have to determine the right size you must buy.
There are the convenient sources from where Australians are buying gold these days. This has further given a boost to the gold market in the country. If you’re thinking about diversifying your investment portfolio by adding your investments in precious metals to it, then you should start from buying gold first.