Okay, so for gold the "price" at any point in time can be taken to be the spot price of gold at that point... so therefore for each trading day (monday to friday) one should be able to have the following four prices: 1. open 2. close 3. low 4. high just like for any other stock, index or security... Regarding these prices, is there any one place which is recognised as "the official" centre for determining spot price? Eg London or New York? There's a little voice which tells me it's London, but then again, what happens to the "spot price" when the London "exchange" is closed (16 hours out of every 24 presumably)? Is there then a secondary exchange which takes over as the "official" gold price determiner of spot price? It would make sense to me if there were three such official exchanges - each operating for 8 hours out of every 24. New York, London and some other one in the East, although their time zones aren't exactly 8 hours apart! My next question is about volume. As you will know, the two critical bits of information about any security that MUST be known at any point in time, or measurement of time (eg one trading day) is price and volume.'So at any point in time we can determine the spot price of gold. But what about the all important measure of volume? Who publishes the volume of gold trades for each trading day? And if such a volume exists and is indeed published, then how is this worked out? eg is every ounce of goild sold indicated a volume unit of 1? also, what kinds of gold sales are included in this daily volume? physical ounces? ETF ounces? other derivatives? (i would hope not!!) Anyway, i'd love to get more information on all these matters from other paper panzies out there
First of all theres no reason to insult pansies like that :lol: I heard somewhere, I think it may have been Mike Maloney being interviewed by J Stella, that the gold price usually goes down when the US, NY stock exchange is running the show, then back to normal when London or Europe is in charge over their watch.
So let me see if I've got this straight... There are literallly dozens of paper panzies on this forum, and not one of you can answer such fundamental questions about where you are getting your price/volume data from (as well as exactly what those volumes mean) upon which you are basing your technical analysis of the gold/silver price? :lol:
Maybe it is a secret, maybe they don't like being called paper pansies, maybe they don't like you... Why so interested? Thinking of joining 'em?
There is no "official" spot price because there is no "official" organisation that manages the international trade in precious metals. It's a global market with many participants trading in many localised marketplaces. At any given moment in time, some of them will be asleep and their markets will be closed and some of them will be awake and their markets will be open. It simply doesn't stop. Ever. If you need a reference point, use the London Fix. It's a snapshot of what the price was at a particular time. Precious metals aren't like any other stock or security so trying to find Daily Highs and Lows isn't especially useful unless you're only interested in a particular localised market, say, the NY market. Someone, somewhere is trading on another local market as the one you're focused on shuts down for the day, so asking "What was the daily high?" depends on who's day you're talking about. The Daily High for one market might be just a small spike for another market when the price rockets upwards 5 minutes after the first market closes.
Yes i hear you regarding the different markets, eg NY or London which track spot price. so yes, per market there will be a low, high, opening and closing price... My questions regarding volume still stand. My guess is that one can only apply volume to a specific gold/silver paper security - such as GLD or SLV ... But is that is the case, then i don't see how technical analysis of that particular security can have any bearing on the general spot price at all. Am hoping our intelligent and distinguished paper traders can shed some light on this for me.
i doubt it's a secret. Paper panzies is a term of endearment! :lol: Not like moi??? neva... cannot imagine that! for sure! I have come to greatly admire my paper panzie friends here ... I believe it's a skill I need to learn if i ever want to be a serious investor.
I am hoping that the great Bullion Baron will make a pit stop at my thread and put me out of my misery with his usual sobering answers...
If you pick a popular security like GLD or SVL it should give you a rough indication of activity in the market it's traded on, but true volume of the whole market is so hard to calculate I doubt anyone could do it. The real volume could be comprised of a mint which buys a contract on the COMEX (which would count as 1 unit of market activity), but the mint would then take delivery, manufacture a coin, sell the coin to a wholesaler who buys it knowing they'll have demand from a retailer who'll then sell it to an investor who's car will suddenly need a new gearbox and end up selling the coin to another investor through a forum like this one. That's 5 units of market activity but the last four are invisible. From my point of view, whatever GLD or SLV is sort of interesting but they're such broad representations of the market that it doesn't really mean anything (well, it means the marketing and PR team have been very successful in creating a new thing for traders to gamble on). Perhaps a better thing to measure would be volume in relation to volatility. I think you'd have better luck trying to figure out what's happening if you can interpret, say, huge volumes while the price remains steady.
yeh i saw that graph yesterday by chance, but am still not at all sure what exactly the volume represents...
Volume can be measured via futures contracts and whatever the contract specs are. Nothing to do with GLD etc. Just go look at GC for gold, like we discussed earlier. The spot price for gold is the current spot futures contract, i.e, @GC. So open/high/low/close can be plotted based on the Chicago trading hours. On a more serious note, I have some advice if you are seriously considering futures trading, and especially gold futures trading - DON'T! You will lose money, I guarantee it. Forget gold, trade ES if you value your cash. Sorry BB - didn't see your post before I posted.
I suppose you could, but ES has liquidity and isn't too volatile, unlike gold. You could also try YM (EMini Dow $5/tick), or NQ (Emini Nasdaq $5/tick), but the granddaddy is the ES, it dwarfs all the other instruments. What I do is trade gold during the Aus day (overnight session), then if I'm awake near the open of US markets forget gold which gets a bit stir crazy and move to the S&P, which is altogether more sedate. Either way, you'll lose money so I'd think of something else, like buy a crate of wine and drink it slowly or something.
Here yip just seen this in the google ads between the charts Gold Futures Prices Gain Access to Analysis of Global Commodity Markets, Get a Trial BusinessMonitor.com/Gold
Hey Yippe, how's the futures trading going? I've started trading Treasuries as well now, much more sedate.