What spot is a price for
Spot is the wholesale price for immediate delivery of one troy ounce of refined gold, in accredited form, in a recognised vault. Gold is $4,133.30 at the benchmark set on , and silver is $53.44.
Read that definition again, because every misunderstanding about gold prices lives in it. Refined. Accredited. In a vault. In wholesale quantity. A 14k chain in a drawer is none of those things, and the distance between it and a good delivery bar is exactly the distance between the spot price and the offer you will be given.
Who sets it
Nobody sets it continuously. Gold trades in overlapping sessions across London, New York, Zurich and Asia for most of the week, and the price is whatever the last trade was. That is fine for trading and useless for a contract that has to settle at a fixed number.
So there is a benchmark. Twice each London trading day, at 10:30 and 15:00, an electronic auction among accredited participants establishes a single published price. Silver has one auction a day, at noon. These are administered under a regulated benchmark regime, published openly, and used to settle contracts worldwide. That published figure is what this site uses, because it is auditable and identical for everyone, rather than one dealer view of a moving screen.
Why your buyer does not pay it
Three reasons, all legitimate. Your metal is not refined, so somebody has to melt it, assay it and separate the gold from the copper and nickel, which costs real money per batch. Your metal is not in quantity, so the fixed costs of doing that fall on a small amount of gold. And the price can move between the moment a buyer takes your ring and the moment they sell refined metal, which is a risk they price for.
On top of those sits a margin, which varies far more between buyers than the refining cost does. That is the part worth shopping around on, and the payout bands show the ranges each kind of buyer works in.
Premiums run the other way too
Buying is the mirror image. A one ounce coin costs more than spot, because minting, distribution, dealer stock and margin are all added on the way to you. The gap is called the premium and it is larger on small items: a tenth ounce coin carries a much higher percentage premium than a kilo bar, for the same reason small scrap lots pay worse.
If you buy at a premium and sell at a discount, the metal price has to move some distance before you are even. That spread is the real cost of owning small physical gold, and it is rarely printed as prominently as the spot chart.
What moves it
Real interest rates, because gold pays no yield and competes with bonds that do. The dollar, since gold is priced in it. Central bank buying, which has been a large and persistent source of demand. Jewellery demand, concentrated in India and China and seasonal. Mine supply, which responds slowly to anything. And risk sentiment, which is why gold moves on days when nothing about gold changed at all.
Spot price questions
What is the spot price of gold?
The price for immediate delivery of one troy ounce of refined gold in the wholesale market. It is the reference every other gold price is quoted against, and it applies to metal in deliverable form rather than to jewellery.
Who sets the gold price?
No single body sets it continuously. The market trades around the clock and prices itself. A formal benchmark is established twice each trading day through an electronic auction administered in London, and that published figure is what contracts and this site reference.
What is the LBMA price?
The London benchmark, set by an auction among accredited participants at 10:30 and 15:00 London time. It exists so that contracts, funds and refiners have one auditable published number to settle against, rather than each picking a moment on a moving screen.
Why can I not buy gold at the spot price?
Because spot is for wholesale bars in an accredited vault, in quantity. Turning that into a coin in your hand adds minting, distribution, dealer margin and often tax. The difference is the premium, and it is larger on small items.
Why does the spot price change constantly?
Gold trades in London, New York, Zurich, Hong Kong and elsewhere nearly 24 hours a day. Every trade is a price. It moves with the dollar, real interest rates, central bank buying, jewellery demand and risk sentiment, none of which stand still.
Does this site use live spot or the benchmark?
The published benchmark, refreshed each trading day. It is auditable, free of any dealer feed, and the right reference for valuing jewellery, where a few dollars an ounce intraday is far smaller than the uncertainty in your weight.
Is the spot price the same in every currency?
It is one global price, conventionally quoted in US dollars per troy ounce. Every other currency quote is that number converted at the current exchange rate, which is why a local gold price can move on a day when dollar gold did not.