Discount or not, go for sovereign gold bonds if you can wait till maturity

Avoid taking tactical exposure or looking for arbitrage opportunities in the listed bonds

The new series of the Sovereign Gold Bond (SGB) scheme is open for subscription from January 14-18. The face value of the bond is Rs 3,214 per gram. If an investor makes an online payment, there's a Rs 50 discount and they could get each bond for Rs 3,164 a gram. But what if you can get an SGB at an 8 per cent discount for, say, Rs 2,957 per gram?
 

Instead of investing in the new SGB issue, you can buy an older one on the stock exchanges at a discount ranging from 3.5-13.0 per cent. "The previous tranches