Financial Disclaimer

1. Journalism, not advice

Everything on this site is published as journalism in the public interest. It is general information and comment addressed to an undifferentiated audience. It is not a personal recommendation, not a suitability assessment, not a solicitation, and not an offer to buy or sell anything.

We are not authorised or regulated as an investment firm, and we do not provide regulated investment services. If you want advice about your own money, seek it from a professional who is authorised in your jurisdiction and who has taken the trouble to understand your circumstances.

2. The specific risks of this asset class

• Price volatility: gold is often described as a haven, yet it has repeatedly lost a third or more of its value in real terms over multi-year periods. A metal can be a long-run store of value and a poor short-run investment simultaneously.
• No cash flow: bullion pays no coupon and no dividend. Its return depends wholly on the price another buyer will pay, and holding it carries storage, insurance and opportunity costs.
• Currency effects: gold is quoted in dollars. A reader whose liabilities are in another currency bears an exchange-rate exposure that can dominate the metal's own move.
• Mining equities are not bullion: producers carry operational, geological, labour, permitting, expropriation, tax and hedging risk. A producer's shares can fall in a rising gold market and have often done so.
• Leverage and derivatives: futures, options, spread bets and contracts for difference can lose more than the amount deposited. Retail loss rates on leveraged products are consistently high.
• Product structure: exchange-traded products differ materially in whether they are physically backed, allocated, segregated, or synthetic. Read the prospectus, not the ticker.
• Physical dealing: coins and small bars carry dealer spreads, assay risk, counterfeit risk, storage cost and, in some jurisdictions, sales tax. The 'spot price' is not the price at which a retail buyer transacts.
• Fraud: precious metals attract a persistent population of boiler rooms, storage scams, unallocated-account frauds and recovery-room follow-ups. Verify the regulatory status of any counterparty before sending funds.

3. How to read our numbers

Prices, spreads, all-in sustaining costs, grades, reserve tonnages and central bank holdings quoted in our articles are accurate to the best of our knowledge as at the date of publication printed on the page. Markets move; official statistics are revised; company disclosures are restated. We do not retrospectively update figures inside a published article, because doing so would falsify the record. Where a revision matters, we append a dated update note.

Forward-looking statements — analyst forecasts, company guidance, scenario sketches — are precisely that. They are reported as claims made by identified parties, not adopted as our own predictions.

4. Sources and their incentives

We quote refiners, miners, central bankers, traders, analysts and campaigners. Every one of them has an interest. A producer wants a higher gold price; a bullion bank earns on turnover; an NGO needs its findings to land; a central bank speaks to a mandate. Where an interest is material to a claim, we say so in the text. Where a source declines to be named, we explain why and what corroboration we obtained.

5. Our own conflicts

Editorial staff and regular contributors are required to disclose personal holdings in gold, gold-linked instruments and mining securities to the editor, and are barred from writing about an issuer in which they hold a material personal position. We do not accept payment, travel, accommodation or gifts from companies we cover in exchange for coverage; where a reporting trip is hosted, that fact is stated in the article.

We accept no sponsored articles, advertorials, or paid placements dressed as journalism. If a commercial relationship ever exists, it will be labelled unmistakably at the top of the page.

6. Jurisdiction

This publication is distributed globally, but nothing on it is directed at any person in any jurisdiction where such distribution or use would be contrary to local law or regulation. Readers are responsible for observing the rules applicable to them, including tax treatment of precious metals, which varies enormously between countries.

In particular, no article here should be read as a financial promotion, as a communication approved by any regulator, or as an inducement to engage in investment activity. Where a product we describe is restricted to professional or accredited investors in your country, our describing it is not an assertion that you may buy it.

7. Historical performance and the shape of the record

Gold's long record is genuinely interesting and routinely abused. A chart that begins at the end of dollar convertibility in 1971 tells one story; a chart that begins at the 1980 peak tells almost the opposite one; a chart in real rather than nominal terms tells a third. When we publish a long series we state the start date, the currency, and whether the figures are adjusted for inflation, because those three choices decide the conclusion before any analysis begins.

Past performance, however presented, is not a guide to future returns. A metal that has held value across five centuries has also spent whole decades disappointing the people who bought it at the wrong moment.

8. Storage, custody and counterparty exposure

• Allocated storage means specific bars, identified by serial number, held for you and outside the custodian's balance sheet in an insolvency. Unallocated means you are an unsecured creditor of an institution, whatever the marketing says.
• Home storage transfers the risk to you: theft, fire, insurance exclusions for high-value metal, and the practical problem of proving what you held.
• Vault operators, dealers and platforms differ enormously in audit frequency, insurer, jurisdiction of the metal and rights of physical withdrawal. These terms are contractual, and they are where the real risk lives.
• Cross-border storage can create tax, reporting and sanctions obligations for the owner that are entirely separate from the metal's price behaviour.

9. Scams we see repeatedly

Reporting on this sector means hearing from readers who have been defrauded. The recurring patterns are worth stating plainly: cold calls offering rare or 'semi-numismatic' coins at multiples of melt value; storage schemes where nobody will name the vault; guaranteed-return contracts backed by unmined ore; recovery firms that promise to retrieve earlier losses for an upfront fee; and celebrity or news-lookalike advertisements that lead to unregulated platforms.

Two habits defeat most of them. Check the counterparty on your own regulator's public register, typing the address in yourself rather than following a link. Then insist on time — no legitimate bullion transaction requires a decision inside an hour.

10. No liability for reliance

We take care with facts and correct errors under our published corrections policy. Nevertheless, to the fullest extent permitted by law, we accept no liability for loss arising from reliance on anything published here, including loss caused by figures that were accurate on the date of publication and have since moved, and by third-party material or links referenced in an article. Nothing in this notice excludes liability that cannot lawfully be excluded, including for fraud.

If a passage anywhere on this site reads as a recommendation to buy or sell, that is a drafting failure rather than an intention. Tell us and we will rewrite it.

11. Forward-looking statements

Our reporting sometimes describes what market participants, analysts, companies or officials expect to happen. Those are attributed expectations, not our forecasts, and attributing a projection is not endorsing it. Where we describe a scenario, we try to state the assumptions it rests on and what would have to be true for it to fail.

No statement in our journalism should be read as a prediction of the future price of gold, of any currency, or of any security. Where a piece contains a number about the future, it is somebody's estimate and the piece will say whose.

12. Taxation

The tax treatment of gold varies enormously by jurisdiction and by form. Investment-grade bullion is exempt from value-added tax in some jurisdictions and not in others; some coins are treated as legal tender and taxed differently from an identical weight of bar; capital gains treatment differs between collectibles and financial instruments; and reporting obligations attach to certain transaction sizes in certain countries.

Nothing we publish is tax advice. Where an article mentions a tax treatment, it describes the position as we understood it at the date of publication in the jurisdiction named, and tax law changes without regard to our publication schedule. Consult a qualified adviser in your own jurisdiction before acting.

13. Products we describe are not products we recommend

We report on exchange-traded funds, futures contracts, allocated and unallocated accounts, mining equities, royalty and streaming companies, digital tokens claiming metal backing, and retail coin dealers. Describing how an instrument works, including describing it accurately and neutrally, is not a recommendation to buy it, and appearing in our coverage is not an endorsement.

Conversely, criticism of a structure is not a recommendation to sell. Our interest is in explaining what a reader is actually holding — who owes what to whom, what happens in a default, and where the metal is — not in advising a course of action.

14. Errors, corrections and the limits of our diligence

We check what we publish against primary sources and we correct what we get wrong, promptly and visibly, under the procedure set out in our Editorial Standards. That process reduces error; it does not eliminate it, and no publication that claims otherwise is being straight with you.

Data drawn from third parties — exchange settlements, refinery statistics, reserve disclosures, company filings — is reproduced in good faith and is only as reliable as its source. Where a figure is disputed, contested or subject to later revision, we say so in the piece rather than presenting a single number as settled fact.