You cannot be an opportunist with a gold fund of fund the way you can with a gold ETF," points out a fund analyst with a wealth management firm. Consider a situation. On a particular day, due to some temporary factors such as excess selling, the price of gold ETF may fall much below the NAV or the one gram price of gold for a few minutes.
If you can spot such an aberration, you may buy that gold ETF at that moment and make a killing as the price corrects . This may not be possible in case of gold fund of fund as it works on the concept of NAV based on the closing prices. While investing in a gold fund of fund, investors must be very clear about the holding period. "If you decide to sell your gold fund of fund in less than six months, you may end up paying exit loads to the tune of 2%
For the small investor the gold fund of funds is a better option provided he is an investor with a 'buy and hold' investment philosophy. But if you can negotiate with your broker for better brokerage rates and have large corpus to invest, gold ETFs can work in your favour.