Does gold trade 24/7/365?
Isn’t here always a new price being set?
I thought it rotates from London to Hong Kong to New York and over to London again.
Does it actually stop trading on weekends and holidays?
This site* charts the price of gold over the previous 72 hours (as well as longer periods, with less detail); the price is nearly always moving, even if only a little, although there have been times when it is absolutely flat for a few hours at a stretch. I have never known why that happens.
*The site does sell commodities like gold, but you won’t be emailed or spammed or anything, there is no registration. And I have no affiliation with it.
Roddy
On closer inspection, the chart shows the various gold trading markets at the bottom, and apparently the times during which each one is active. Apparently there is 15 minutes between 17:45 and 18:00 when gold is not traded anywhere?
Usually if you get a gold pirce from somewhere, it’s from one or another specific market. If the market(s) you are quoted are closed, the price won’t change. I imagine they differ a bit from market to market; not enough to matter. If they want to quote the average from markets X,Y,Z and W all around the world, then maybe you’ll get a continuously changing price.
As noted, there are various commodity exchanges around the world that you can trade gold on. The price most quoted and used for pricing derivatives in North America (and Europe?) is the London gold fixing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_fixing
That depends what you mean. Many commodity exchanges will close on weekends and holidays, but you can still do over-the-counter (non-exchange) trades when the exchange is closed.
In the US, the London gold fix is little used these days. The Comex price is used for most of the day, then the after market overseas. The spot price changes every minute.
Just to clarify, I’m talking about settling derivatives contracts (e.g. commodity swaps). Are you talking about the same thing?
I admit that it has been a few years since I dealth with commodity swaps, so things might have changed since then.