Capital Economics: India's gold lending = gold standard?

All eyes are on the Indian government's attempts to reduce gold imports and tackle a growing trade deficit but with 18,000 tonnes of gold already within it's borders could there be unexpected consequences?

I bought gold yesterday

Despite a great deal of uncertainty about my investment rationale, I bought some gold yesterday afternoon. I did it without consulting previous agonies over action vs inaction or anything else other than the price had  fallen below a level that had caused me to think about it earlier in the day.

1.8% error in ETF Securities' physical gold ETFs PHAU and PHGP?

There was a near 2% drop in the price of ETFS Physical Gold (PHAU) on Tuesday that didn't appear to correspond with the spot price of gold. The drop happened after a large trade of the ETF for the day (an automatic sell order  of 11,000 shares worth around £1.8 million).

Gold drops $10 in 10 minutes

I'm in the process of rethinking my gold investment ideas. Just noticed that the gold price dropped $10 dollars and still wondering why.

I need to take a proper look at whether to get back in or if I have to wait for another significant drop in prices - which may not happen for a while.

Gold gains more than 1% but will it continue?

The gold price gained more than 1% this morning. It's a bit unnerving for someone waiting on the sidelines hoping the gold price will fall far enough to justify selling in December.

But here's what seems to be happening today: the euro rose against the dollar but commentators tell Reuters it's not a longterm trend and Indians started buying gold again (Reuters again).  I try to get my head around both of these issues below  - the Indian buying story may not be a longterm one yet either.

But it seems no one really expects much real movement on Europe until the results of Spanish and Italian bond auctions on Thursday and Friday. Is there any reason to buy gold before then?

Well the gold price shot up today:

The gold ETFs I do not own gained too -

As the falling dollar played a big part in the gain any changes in the pound sterling denominated PHGP looks a bit less impressive/painful and these are the changes you'd get if you owned PHAU, the dollar version anyway - which is what I'd buy. The Bloomberg dollar index chart shows the dollar moving lower. (Reuters said this was due to short covering on the euro:"Traders said there was no fundamental reasons for the short squeeze in the euro with news out of Europe continuing to paint a dreary picture.")

The pound moving in the same direction as the euro - up today (the green figures above the chart) but moving downwards over the last month (the chart). It's opposite relationship to the dollar is likely to get stronger? (Reuters story: )




Adding to a list of gold watchers who think the price of gold is more likely to fall than rise in the short term appears to be Perth Mint's Bron Suchecki (also Gold Chat) whose negative views included the effect of MF Global: "This is not necessarily negative in the long run, as these investors may instead opt for direct physical investment, but in the meantime any contraction in leveraged paper positions puts pressure on the gold price."

The other key factor he cites is Indian gold demand: "Physical Indian ounce demand will return eventually but in the short run the situation  continues to be negative, with Reuters reporting Prithviraj Kothari as saying "Still prices  are high. Interest rates are high. Liquidity is tight. I think imports in the first quarter of  2012 will be 50 percent lower than last year."

Although he adds that there is some pick-up of bar demand and that a change, when it comes, will be very fast.

Just this morning Reuters said dealers in Mumbai said a drop in local prices to a one-week low was used to stock up ahead of wedding season beginning later this month. Harshad Ajmera, proprietor of JJ Gold House in Kolkata said: "Buying will continue until March."

It also said India's central bank has allowed four more banks to import precious metals which would boost competition and help reduce premiums.

In the same report Reuters quotes Macquarie analyst Hayden Atkins who said "A big part of the weakness into the end of the year was people taking profits and liquidity being a bit lower."

He said that the end of this process might explain why an inverse correlation between the dollar and the euro/gold.

"I would expect that to unwind, and maybe that's why we're seeing stronger gold even when the euro is tending to weaken. You don't have that length there any more." He told Reuters he expected gold's inverse link to the dollar to drive prices in this year.

Violent gold thefts hit UK's Asian community says BBC

According to a BBC investigation the rising price of gold has sparked a number of violent robberies in Yorkshire's Asian community targeting wedding gold.

The written introduction for the half-hour-long radio show (broadcast last week) said: "As a result of the fear of this crime there is now a long waiting list for safety deposit boxes - as an alternative those with extended families try and ensure their homes are never left empty, whilst others are buying CCTV systems or working out what to hide where. According to the police it isn't just burglaries - the gold is also being snatched in streets robberies where Asians are being targeted and in a recent cases a newly married bride was robbed whilst at the wedding celebration itself."

A number of wedding gold robbery victims are interviewed and the ease with which stolen gold can be sold via online gold buyers is also discussed.

As a gold ETF investor I don't really care about the gold itself, I'm never likely to see anything I own via exchange traded funds. My focus is on its financial value. 

In fact I sold  all 28 of my gold shares a couple of days ago out of fear that the price of gold might fall as low as  $1,200 per oz. I aim to buy them back but that's not the same for people who own gold for other reasons.

I do own a gold signet ring which a number of local pawn shops valued at around £40 and I think I'd be quite upset if I had to sell it or it was stolen.
   

A grateful gold victim

This morning I wrote a post saying I needed to work out whether I should buy or sell as gold prices fell.  I couldn't make up my mind and headed off to meet my dad for lunch.

At the time the loss showing on my account was £216 but, by the end of the trading day when I next looked, that loss had grown to £360. The 28 ETFS Physical Gold shares (PHAU) were down 8.58%, or £262. Meanwhile the BlackRock Gold and General fund units were down 6.6% or £99. 

The BlackRock fund is really down quite a bit more than that though as it would have been priced at midday, before shares like Fresnillo took the worst of the damage (Fresnillo shares fell 11% although some of the damage was due to going ex dividend and new rules announced by FTSE - although Google finance shows a big rebound late in the day) 

Gold price news was all about the strength of the dollar hurting commodities across the board with the usual talk about gold's safe haven status being ruined because of its volatility which unnerves potential and existing investors... like me! But Bloomberg reports that gold ETF investors are still hanging on.

Below are a few charts showing the performance of the dollar index against the world's largest gold ETF the SPDR Gold Trust (GLD) using Bloomberg charts.

Over one month it looks like an inverse relationship of note

Over three months that still holds:

Over six months:

Over a year:

And over three years: 

If gold drops from its current £1570 level to $1,500 per ounce that would be a further 4.5% loss while a fall to $1,400 per ounce mean an 11% fall from its current level. For my portfolio that would  mean a loss of another £307 just on the ETF adding to a loss of £668.45 or 21.9% on the original £3,057 investment. 

That's a scenario mentioned by a number of commentators like Dave Lutz and also by Dennis Gartman - although he's said similar things before - and even though this is a bit more positive from Gold Seek, the $1,400 level is not ruled out.

I'm still not sure what to do but may start selling tomorrow. I suppose I should be grateful that this moment of doubt has come sooner rather than later and will force me to get a bit more comfortable with my own views.

Gold keeps falling: buy or sell?

It's difficult to work out a sensible short-term course of action. I have now invested around £4,500 into gold and gold companies. That initial investment is now worth around £4,300.

Of that I have £2,900 invested in ETF Securities physical gold exchange traded fund PHAU (the value of that investment is now down from £3,057) and I have another £1,440 invested in the BlackRock Gold and General fund (down from £1,500).

So far I have not sold anything. I would like to sell something soon, just to get used to the idea.

But I want to sell higher than I have bought and at the current level that is not where things stand. I could either see it as a buying opportunity or a signal to sell before gold falls further.

Two days ago I was thinking the same thing. I bought £1,000 at the lowest price I have managed so far, the question is whether I want to carry on buying as the price drops or sell as the price drops.

Today's fall (link to google chart above) - PHAU is down nearly 2% while PHGP, which is a closer tracker of this investment in sterling terms is down 1.5% - appears to be on the back of renewed confidence in the US economy and diminished likelihood of more quantitative easing. (Although that appears to have been tempered a little.)

This hit gold on two fronts as far as I can tell. One is that more QE means that there is greater suspicion of currencies - money printing undermines the value of currencies and increases demand for gold and bolsters confidence in people who already own it. This hasn't happened.

It also means that investors, who have been expecting QE to boost share prices (because it encourages investors to move cash from less risky assets into riskier ones like shares) will have been disappointed too.

Any damage to equity markets has tended to lead to falls in the price of gold.

So good news in Europe would help gold and bad news in the US would help gold. We're getting the opposite at the moment plus quite a lot of negative talking which has a pretty big effect on people like me.

Experienced gold investors like Dennis Gartman are saying things like this about the direction of the gold price: "Lower, we fear and perhaps decidedly so. So much damage has been done to the psychology of the market in the past week and so many late longs have been caught off guard that we think wholesale liquidation … and perhaps forced liquidation … shall be the outcome."

Apparently this will have sent many investors running for the exits.

Gartman said: "We can imagine gold trading back toward €1075-1125/oz and/or toward US$1475-1525. It really won’t take much to push it there. Panic liquidation would do so rather swiftly. We’ll simply stand aside from the gold market then, preferring to be long of gold and not wishing really to be short of it. The sidelines seem the cozier of the two."

But it's not like he hasn't said similar things before and been wrong - in June 2011 he said gold could fall swiftly to $1,480 an ounce when it was trading at $1,527.

A week later he had reversed his position buying more gold. But that's not a good basis on which to ignore his words.

Some other views of well known gold investors outlined here by Neoclassical Economist on Seeking Alpha - mainly negative (Jim Rogers, John Paulson) - not like the author or other gold 'guru'Jim Cramer.

Other interesting stuff: FT covers news that gold ETF holdings are at an all time high.

For now I'm not making a decision about anything. I'm going for lunch with Dad.

Gold ETF Investor, riots and rises on November 30 2011

The office next door to where I'm working temporarily was occupied by UK Uncut today - at least the picture I took on my phone suggests something was going on.

So on the day of mass strikes in the UK central banks on both sides of the Atlantic took coordinated action to push down the value of the dollar. I haven't looked into the mechanism but FT Alphaville suggests this piece for further reading on the subject. However rises in markets was as much if not more to do with traders being forced to close down their bets against the euro.

The effect, a fall for the dollar and relative rise in the value of the pound.

When the dollar falls in value the price of gold rises because it becomes more attractive to investors using different currencies. But it also means that the gold they own - dollar, denominated assets, are worth less in terms of their own currencies.

PHGP Vs PHAU

Google Finance chart of PHGP vs PHAU shows the US denominated gold rising faster than sterling denominated gold. This means, relatively speaking, it is cheaper for me to buy sterling gold and I will get fewer pounds back when I sell my gold - in other words the pound has strengthened against the dollar. Google Chart

My gold investments are still down overall since the original investment on September 22.

On Thursday and Friday of last week I bought £500 worth of BlackRock Gold and General fund which will have helped a bit but I am wondering about the price drop predictions outlined in the last couple of blogs. I need to read this from the Investors Chronicle, it mentions the fund in the context of a small investor's portfolio.

I'm buying the fund not the ETF today but will gold plunge anyway?

MoneyWeek's John C Burford said in an email today : "my target is for gold to fall to much lower levels".

His last gold forecast proved pretty accurate but I didn't act on it because I didn't understand his methods.

I still don't. However I am at a buying moment - it's two months since my first investment on 22 September - and I've decided on a vague month-by-month investment strategy.

So I am looking to add more to my gold bet, either via investing in ETFS Physical Gold (PHAU) or BlackRock Gold and General and I had a look at this choice yesterday.

Back to Burford... just because he was right last time I thought I'd hang on and see if he's right again. I can't tell from the piece what sort of time scale he's putting on this - his 'tramlines' suggest the fall will be today (Thursday).

I've just put in a £250 order for more BlackRock Gold and General (it's been accepted although I didn't think I could invest such small amounts. If it goes through I might do the same over the next three days. But I want to check with my broker Hargreaves Lansdown what they mean by this: "We actively monitor levels of trading and may refuse applications from anyone who is considered to have a history of short-term or excessive trading or whose trading has been, or may be, disruptive" in their terms and conditions).

I also need to properly understand how the spreads on this unit trust work. Yesterday the buying price was nearly 6% higher than the selling price although most of this should be wiped-off because I'm dealing through Hargreaves Lansdown.

As far as I can tell, I am able to cancel my order by phone any time before the investment manager starts processing the order - and no one knows when that is.

In his piece Burford says that if gold falls with markets "This demonstrates the fact that gold may not be, contrary to common wisdom, a hedge against financial turmoil. If and when the Dow makes a huge leap down, gold is likely to follow."

That does seem to be the way things work at the moment due to investors selling gold and buying dollars. But gold falls less and recovers faster and that's enough for me - and it seems like a good idea to buy at those low points.

I also noticed that my pounds have weakened against the dollar - hence the sterling gold ETF PHGP, has not fallen as far as PHAU. To me this looks counter-intuitive but I think it makes sense: if I convert my dollar denominated ETF into pounds I get more pounds per dollar (because the pound has weakened) so, in sterling terms my gold price hasn't fallen so far. This means that a sterling based investor is at a disadvantage during a good buying opportunity.

I want the pound to be weak when I sell, not when I buy. But this stuff still doesn't come naturally to me!

As far as I can tell this currency problem is by-passed, or passed on to fund manager, by investing in the BlackRock Gold and General. Hopefully a fund manager knows how to deal with that catch 22.

At the same time I can also invest smaller amounts at no cost. So I'm going to give it a go.

Pawnshops vs Gold ETFs: World Gold Council project?

Management at the highstreet pawnbroker Albermarle and Bond have told shareholders the company had a good start to the year and that this had continued into October.

The chart above (click to enlarge) shows the performance of two AIM (Alternative Investment Market) quoted pawnbrokers - H&T (Harvey and Thompson) and Albermarle and Bond - alongside the performance of the ETFS physical gold ETF (PHAU) Google Chart. It shows their share prices have under performed the dollar denominated gold ETF.

Despite the business model of these businesses becoming increasingly linked to the gold price the share prices aren't keeping up - probably due to nervousness around all small companies as the eurozone crisis continues.

This blog's attempts to get to grips with a gold ETF investment led to a number of trips into Hackney pawnbrokers, including Albermarle and Bond. While these pawnshops offer better deals on gold than most jewellers which buy gold - the seller hardly gets a good deal (pawnshops vs ETFs on price).

As far as I can tell pawnshops still prey mainly on poor people - amplifying their problems rather than solving them. (According to pawnbroker H&T, pawn shops are also increasingly used by the middle classes:Pawnbroker note rise in 'middle class' customers.)

Hackney in London, where I live, is full of pawnshops and betting shops. Neither are symbols of a healthy community.

Meanwhile the deals on offer in the UK appear to be worse than those offered in India by India's largest gold pawnbroker, Mathoots. The firm recently opened a store in the South London and the deal it offers is better than most UK pawnbrokers.

May be there's an opportunity here for the World Gold Council to do something useful. The organisation, which is financed by the world's gold miners, has a mission statement to "increase and sustain demand for gold."

The investment side of this has included creating the incredibly successful gold ETFs and now it also supports gold accounts like bullionVault.

But these innovations are for people whose gold ownership is a wealth preserver. Could it do something useful for people who are dealing in gold out of desperation?

It's a selfish argument for some one who owns gold, but it seems pretty obvious that fairer pawn shops would enable more people to maintain ownership.

And if poor people didn't have to sell their gold - often wedding jewellery - at knock down rates only for it to be melted down and sold to investors - the price of gold might be more stable.

(Telegraph story: Pawnbroker thrives in downturn, has interesting comments)

H&T reported a huge rise in the number of people who failed to pay back loans, thus forsaking their jewellery. At the same time this blog found out that Muslims in East London, who are forbidden from paying interest, have been using pawnbrokers, often putting their wedding gold at risk in doing so.

Not only will a pawnshop not take into consideration craftsmanship (even though they sometimes re-sell jewellery) but even the scrap value is highly favourable to the pawnshop.

Then, when a person wants to replace their jewellery they have to pay a huge premium for craftsmanship again.

Surely more people would own gold and trust it if there were fairer ways for them to borrow against it and benefit from its investment value when they need it. Instead pawnshops buy up their jewellery, melt it down and sell it. This, according to precious metals analysts GFMS, was a significant supply of gold last year, and, as such, will have helped keep its price down.

GFMS analysts said that the supply of scrap gold increased significantly in 2009 in North America and Europe. "Much of this growth was a result of heavy promotion by an improving network of scrap collectors, who made great use of consumer's need to sell unwanted jewellery to raise cash in a challenging economic environment." Read H&T's results to see how they cashed in on this with their "gold bars".

20 October 2011 gold ETF report: test of faith

Today my ETF Securities Physical Gold (PHAU) shares dropped 2.4%.

I'm not going to interpret the causes - some of them are discussed here (IB Times) and some more here (MarketWatch). The argument is that if gold isn't a fear barometer it's a useless investment for a while.

Where do I stand in this situation?

First the boring bit - deciphering what's happened to my PHAU shares. Then I'll assess whether I'm in enough pain to act and, lastly, whether I have enough knowledge to act sensibly.

When I bought the shares on 22 September I paid $172.734 per share (that's before adding the £11.95 I was charged to carry out the transaction.)

At the close of business today Hargreaves Lansdown would have paid me $158.03 for each of them. (The offer price was $158.22 per share.)

So my shares have dropped 8.5% in their dollar value - again that's before adding the cost of dealing.

Unfortunately that's the happiest spin my gold ETF story gets today.

When I bought the shares they cost £111.9787 each. There were 8 of them which adds up to £895.8296.

By the end of today - 20 October 2011 - my eight shares had a sterling value of £803.81 according to HL which used an exchange rate of $1.5728 to £1 to get this figure.

So in sterling, before dealing costs, my loss is £895.8296 - £803.81 and on that count I'm down £92 which equates to a 10.27% loss. That's a lot worse than the 8.5% dollar loss calculated above.

That appears to be because the pound has strengthened against the dollar (check this Google chart). It now costs me more to buy pounds with my gold ETF dollars than it did back on September 22.

At the end of 22 September £1 would have bought me $1.5358. Now, nearly a month later, my pound buys me $1.5728. That works out at a 2.4% increase in the purchasing power of my pound against the dollar. That has worked against me because my investment is in a dollar denominated asset.

If I wanted to sell now I'd have to include a £11.95 transaction cost which would come off what HL would pay me: so £803.81 - £11.95= £791.86.

When I first bought the shares I also paid £11.95, a total of £907.8 for my shares and so the difference between the entrance and exit price widens again. Now I would be exit with £791.86 when I spent £907.78 entering. A £115.92 loss or -12.7%.

So what do I do?

It feels like I picked a testing time to try out a 'leap-before-you-look" investment style in gold. But where does my faith lie? Should I sell and wait til things get better? Or should I hang on?

I'm a financial journalist of sorts (out of work at the moment!) and I've written about gold related investments for a while. This generally involved passing on various people's views about the price of gold and silver.

It's embarrassing but while writing about it, it didn't cross my mind to ask such a basic question as: "Where does the price of gold come from?"

But when I bought physical gold ETF shares it was an obvious hole in my knowledge because my investment tracks the "spot price" of gold.

Adrian Ash, head of research at the BullionVault helped me work towards an answer in this piece: Is the gold "spot price" real?

Then today I read some of this blog "Gold Chat" and was relieved to find out that it's quite common for people to take the construction of the gold price for granted. They don't realise that it's an issue until they buy the stuff.

Bron, who works at Perth Mint in Australia and writes Gold Chat said: "It was always amusing to me when clients would ring up to buy and we would quote a price and then, naturally, they would say “Well, where can I get what the spot price is?” so they could work out if our price was “fair”. The answer was, “It doesn’t exist.""

I expect there will be lots more surprisingly basic (or stupid) questions I need to answer before I get comfortable with the product I own, let alone the gyrations of the gold market.

On that front Bron is a reassuring read for people left confused and worried by the daily shifts in the gold price - look at the day trading section of the Investment Time Frames section. I feel like this has provided me a bit of space to work out what my motivations were for buying gold in the first place. I'll be looking at Gold Chat's investment time frames: part one and part two to start off with.

I don't know what I'm doing but, at the moment, owning gold has forced me to pay attention. I don't think I'd be interested if I wasn't invested enough for this to be a painful experience.

I'm not interested in diversifying until I have a better grasp of what I've already got - although I do own BlackRock Gold and General Fund too.

Is the gold "spot price" real?

I don't own gold I own the 'spot price' of gold

After taking a look at the prospectus for my ETFS Physical Gold (PHAU) shares I'm fairly sure that I'm not really the owner of gold. Yes the shares are backed by real lumps of the stuff in a vault but the chances are that I’ll never get my hands on it.

In reality the gold backing my PHAU shares is more like collateral - it’s what I have a right to if all else fails. Before that happens though, the prospectus for ETFS Physical Gold says my shares are valued at something called the “spot price” of gold (ETFS said that PHAU tracks the loco London spot market).

So what is this “spot price”?

On the face of it, the construction of the gold price appears a bit random. Adrian Ash at UK online gold and silver market BullionVault told me that the price is not standardised, which means it’s not like tracking the share price of Marks and Spencers for which there is a single price quoted through the London Stock Exchange.

So, in the case of gold, the source of the price is not set in stone. Ash says that the data feed that supplies the free online "spot" chart at BullionVault, where he is the head of research, is not likely to be the same as the data feed that supplies, say, the chart at Canadian bullion dealers Kitco and the prices may be slightly different.

This is because the companies that provide the data feeds can pick and choose the sources of the data. These will be dealers who have agreed to pass on their live buying and selling prices. However Ash points out that any difference in price will be minimal because a dealer who deviates far from the global price will either have everyone knocking on their door… or no one.

In general though, the prices that make up the core of the global spot price come from the big banks listed as the “market makers” for the London bullion Market Association – centre of the world's wholesale physical trade.

These include the likes of JPMorgan, HSBC and to be an official ‘market maker’ an institution promises to offer prices at which they will buy and sell gold at all times during the hours of London trading.

But these banks are global so when trading shuts in London it shifts over to New York.

Wherever the trading is going on, the prices offered are being fed to the likes of Bloomberg and Reuters and other data providers who then compile gold “spot prices” for their clients. To do this they take the mid points between the buying and selling prices offered by each market maker and find the average.

Ash said: “So take note – any "spot" price data you see will fail to show any widening of the spread between buying and selling prices during strong volatility.” So investors should look carefully at the difference between the price they are being offered and the gold spot price.

There are further complications to the foundations of the “spot price” and the extent to which it describes the price of physical gold. To start with, the London market makers are not the only sources of data or the only influence on the gold price.

But during London trading hours they are the biggest players and the deals being done in London are for metal and are supposed to be completed within two days. But that’s not the case in other markets that influence the gold price. Ash said that when trading shifts to the USA the biggest gold market open for business becomes the New York futures market – where promises to deliver gold at a specific date are traded, but the vast bulk of contracts are in fact settled for cash, not metal.

Influences like this are somehow factored into the data feeds for “spot gold” prices supplied to traders.

In contrast to the apparently laissez faire price setting – where there can be minor discrepancies – there is no flexibility about the gold that is bought and sold in the loco London spot market.

This is entirely standardised with approved refiners, vaults and traders. If the gold is in the system it is considered good for delivery and if it leaves the system it isn’t allowed back in without severe checks.

Conclusions: Supply and demand, investor fear, interest rates and the value of the dollar are the engines that drive the gold price. But the gold price itself is the speedometer and it seems sensible to check that it's actually measuring what you want it to measure.

The fact that it doesn’t include spreads - the difference between the price at which gold is bought by market makers and the price at which they sell it – essentially means that gold is will not change hands at this price.

It may be useful to find out more about when and why spreads widen and whether the changes are large enough to let them influence an investment decision.

Also, does anyone monitor the differences between gold price data feeds, particularly in times of crisis? Are there any technical dangers in terms of the gold price?

Gold ETF bestseller for retail investors?

The three most heavily bought shares (by value) were the same as the three most heavily sold shares by investors using Hargreaves Lansdown on Friday. These were Barclays, Lloyds and the iShares FTSE 100 exchange traded fund.

The ETFS Physical Gold ETF (PHAU) was one of the few shares on the top twenty list that didn't also make a showing on the list of shares being dumped at high speed by investors.

On Thursday Hargreaves Lansdown published an interim management statement which said that the number of clients opening accounts had increased but added that it wasn't expecting much action from them: "Whilst uncertainty remains about sovereign debt and default and a possible second recession, it is increasingly likely the retail investor will feel they need more pounds in their pocket and may continue to defer new investment decisions."

It's hard to tell if their buying and selling lists illustrate this prediction, or whether retail investors see gold as a kind of cash.

Also on Thursday the Sterling denominated PHGP was the gold ETF of choice (At close on Friday the spreads for PHGP were bid 10,382 offer 10,385 or 0.028% which were narrower than the spreads for the dollar denominated PHAG $164.09 and $162.3 or 0.12% - I was under the impression it was usually the other way around.)

Check LSE not broker for $ price of PHAU gold ETF shares

In the last post Hargreaves Lansdown (HL) told me what I'd paid in dollars for my ETF Securities Physical Gold shares (PHAU) because it wasn't on my contract note. I then asked them whether I needed to get in touch with them every time I traded to find out what I'd paid in dollars.

One of their traders emailed me saying that for now the details of how much I'd paid in dollars would not be available via my HL account but they were looking into adding them.

In the meantime I was told that I could find the particulars of my trade, priced in dollars, on the London Stock Exchange website.

So I took a look and yes, the details of all trades for one day are available for every share that is dealt on the exchange. An investor will need to be able to identify their own trade. I'm hoping I can do so just by knowing the number of shares I bought and the time I did the trade (and hope that no one else had done anything too similar recently).

How do you find these dollar prices? You can simply type PHAU into the search at the top of the LSE site and its page will come up - half way down you'll find a box showing the five most recent trades.

If you want to see all the trades for that day then adjust the controls above the displayed trades.

It should look like this: