I used to trade forex myself, and commodities but he was asking totally a different question.︀
Online trading platforms let you speculate on gold and other commodities, you don’t own them.︁
My suggestion was to hedge exposure, own and trade at the same time, with practically︂ very small risk, no security concerns, no vault fees, and zero taxes.
Suggesting to buy︃ mining stocks instead of physical gold to evade storage fees is absurd when the model︄ I suggested let’s you own gold without physical storage fee and security concerns either.
You never know how the mining company will perform in relation to market conditions, competition, price,︅ etc. You have to swift through dozens or hundreds or reports, quality control reports, earnings︆ reports and then consider the overall market sentiment, specially in these times when fundamental analysis︇ don’t apply anymore.
Also you handicap yourself, both ways, increase of price of gold is︈ not translated directly with the value of the mining company, since it’s value depends on︉ it’s performance and mining volume.
Same goes for decrease of the price, you have to︊ take into consideration any liability that mining company has, it’s own supply, etc.
It’s the︋ same if someone wanted to invest in Oil, and rather than investing on it, to︌ invest in drilling and oil companies.