"Thanks for link to the very interesting report on gold posted on Friday.

"With regard to the authors' opinion that junior miners "are the best way to play a rising gold price" - now that the Market Vectors Junior Gold Miners ETF (GDXJ) has been trading for about a year and a half, have you formed any view on its suitability as a vehicle for this type of investment?

"Also, if, as the report puts it, the rationale for investing in the miners is to get leverage to a rising gold price, wouldn't it be simpler just to take leveraged position on gold directly? After all, this can be straightforwardly done by private investors, say, by means of a spread bet."

David Fuller's view I regard junior miners as a high-beta play on gold, but probably in need of a neutral to positive overall stock market environment to record that beta on the upside.

If that is the environment you expect, then GDXJ seems a suitable vehicle, being reasonably liquid at $2.5bn and offering a good spread across the sector.

If it is leverage that you want, then a tax-efficient spread-bet in bullion is a sensible route, provided you are accustomed to trading on that basis. I assume that you can also spread-bet on GDXJ, although the spread would be considerably higher than for bullion. With spread-betting, getting the trend right is less than half the battle. The really tricky part is always going to be tactics regarding stops, especially if you are building a sizeable position in a trending environment.