Do you think there is a difference between Swiss gold and American gold? What is Swiss gold anyway? Gold protects against inflation in any currency, because you cannot make more gold. Doesn’t matter which currency you bought it for and which currency inflation you want to protect against.
So you’re asking what difference does it make when you buy these:
It makes no big difference if you buy it in CHF or USD. Just buy it in the currency that you have or in the currency that is the most liquid (that means where you have a lot of peopl trading and spreads are low).
Just check out this chart, the return of both red and blue is identical:
Now for the hedged CHF, it is like this: you think gold is a good investment, you want to buy some, but you also think that CHF such a cool currency and it will be much stronger than USD in the future. So you take your regular return of gold in CHF and multiply it by CHF/USD exchange rate. So if CHF goes up, your hedged ETF goes up, if CHF goes down, your ETF goes down.
That being said, when I invested my money in VT, my reasoning was: I invest in thousands of companies, where millions of people work, and I have a strong feeling than in 10, 20, 30 years these companies will be much more advanced than they are now, and they will have provided a lot of value to the people over these years.
What is the reason behind gold? Because it’s rare, shiny and people love it. I guess it makes sense to keep a bit of physical gold for a doomsday scenario, only if you have a safe place to store it. But a buy-and-hold ETF?
And why should currency matter for, say, VT?