Invest In Gold Mutual Funds If you’re like me, you really don’t want to be stuck with a set group of companies. If nothing else, you could simply purchase the stocks that comprise the given index, and then you could buy and sell them, if only you had a basis for doing so. So, if you are like a lot of people, you either need some guidance as to when you should buy and sell, or else you need to have someone do it for you. Using a quality mutual fund is a simple, and effective, way to put somebody else in charge. There are good mutual funds that, for all intents and purposes, function like an ETF for your purposes. However, they can offer some distinct benefits. With a good mutual fund, you can get broad exposure to quality companies. However, you get the flexibility of having a knowledgeable person always ensuring that you are invested in the best opportunities the market has to offer. If it’s time for a company to go, for whatever reason, it can be sold and cash moved to a more viable option. The company can even be sold and repurchased if it would ever make sense to do so. There are some identifiable drawbacks, but the average investor would not be bothered by them. Mutual funds are only bought and sold after the market has closed and the net asset value has been established. However, the fact that they are not traded throughout the day is usually not an issue for most people. Likewise, the inability to trade options on the mutual fund is generally irrelevant to most people considering a mutual fund. The only other drawback would simply be if you either did not have the required minimum $5,000 investment, or else did not want to concentrate so much money in one area. The U.S. Global Investors Gold and Precious Metals Fund, or USERX, comes to mind as a great fund for folks wanting to focus solely on producers. These are the companies that are already extracting and selling product into the marketplace. They simply continue to prosper as the price of gold goes up. A variant on this fund is the U.S. Global Investors World Precious Minerals Fund (UNWPX). UNWPX puts 20% of invested capital into the smaller exploration, or “junior,” companies. The balance is in larger producers just like USERX. Each of these funds are a great way to invest in gold and they are both comparable in terms of other factors. For instances, they require a minimum starting investment of $5,000. This is not generally a problem unless one either does not have the funds or else doesn’t want to allocate that much to a given asset class. Additionally, these mutual funds carry a 1.5% expense ratio. This is notably higher than popular ETF products, but the active management can readily offset this thru superior returns. For those looking for a passive way to invest in gold, whether through gold ETF funds or mutual funds or otherwise, these are great options to look into.