Digital investment platform provider SendGold has made its gold trading service available to SMSFs after receiving multiple requests from the sector to do so.
“We’re excited that we now have capability for our customers to invest in gold with their SMSFs using the SendGold platform. It’s great to be able to help protect superannuation and retirement investments in the same way we’ve being helping individuals to de-risk their investment portfolios in these uncertain times,” SendGold chief executive Jodi Stanton said.
The development means SMSF trustees will now have access to the SendGold mobile app, which will allow them to trade physical gold, stored on their behalf in secure independent vaults in Australia, across 13 countries.
According to SendGold, both the volume of transactions and average transaction sizes involving the precious metal have increased by 819 per cent and 311 per cent respectively since January and the outbreak of the coronavirus in March.
The trend is consistent with investor behaviour that has historically seen individuals gravitate toward gold during times of economic uncertainty, the platform provider said.
Gold is also a popular hedge against currency fluctuations and inflation and can provide an additional layer of diversification to investment portfolios as it has no correlation with other popular asset classes, such as equities, bonds and property, the manager added.
However, Stanton pointed out the precious metal should not be seen as an investment category suitable for market volatility being experienced in the immediate term.
“We feel gold is a long-term play. We strongly believe that gold will prove to be a profitable investment over the course of this decade, providing security in any portfolio,” she added.
Statistics SendGold quoted show gold has outperformed both shares and bonds over 10 and 20 years and has delivered comparable performance to the domestic property market since 2000.
