Commodities

Exchange trading

• The largest international trading locations for precious metals are London, New York and Shanghai. elsewhere precious metals are traded less.

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  The London metal exchange (LME) specializes in intermediary transactions with non-ferrous metals. It is history is associated with raw materials coming to the UK from overseas for production of tin and copper. The exchange started in 1877 with copper trading. Short-term contracts were signed for three months, which was the time it took for the metals to travel from Singapore and south america to the UK.

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  The New york mercantile exchange (NYMEX) is a futures market. One of it is divisions is the comex which is engaged in trading operations of buying and selling options and futures of non-ferrous and precious metals: gold, silver, aluminium, copper and others. Approximately 15 thousand exchange transactions with metals are executed at NYMEX annually.

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  The Shanghai gold exchange is the largest and one of the leading platforms of precious metals trading in the world. Founded in 2002 it has the status of a non-profit organization, and both chinese companies as well as foreign banks have the right to participate. Precious metals trading is carried out mainly with options and futures on gold bullions.

The way precious metals are priced

Metals trading is affected by seasons, market volume, and up/down trends throughout the day. as a general rule trading decisions should be made based on data from the economic calendar and it’s best to follow statistics from america and china.

As a rule of thumb, gold and silver, react negatively to the growth of stock indices, at which point the attractiveness of precious metals as a ‘safe asset’ decreases.