Xauusd
Family I · Instruments
Not to be confused with 1 pip in xauusd, xauusd what is it, xauusd symbol.
XAUUSD is a quotation convention rather than a security: it expresses how many US dollars are required to buy one troy ounce of gold. The symbol combines the ISO 4217 currency codes XAU (gold) and USD (US dollar), and it appears on spot metals venues, futures feeds and contracts for difference alike. It is not a company, a fund or a coin, and holding a XAUUSD position does not by itself confer ownership of physical bullion.
How the quote is read
As with any currency pair, the first element is the base and the second is the quote currency. In XAUUSD the base is gold and the quote currency is the dollar, so a price of 2,350.00 means one troy ounce is worth 2,350.00 US dollars. A rise in the quote therefore means gold has strengthened against the dollar, or the dollar has weakened against gold; the two statements describe the same move.
Quotations are normally given to two decimal places, and the smallest quoted increment is 0.01. Because one troy ounce is the unit, position sizes are usually expressed in ounces or in lots whose ounce content is set by the venue or product, so the same nominal lot can represent different amounts of metal from one contract specification to another.
Worked example
The arithmetic is linear in the number of ounces, before any commission, financing charge or spread cost is applied. Those costs are set by the venue or provider and vary, so the net result can differ materially from the gross figure shown.
What moves the quote
Because the dollar is the quote currency, XAUUSD responds to both gold-specific and dollar-specific factors. Gold-specific influences include central bank reserve buying, mine supply, recycling flows and jewellery demand. Dollar-specific influences include US interest rate expectations, inflation data and the general strength of the dollar against other currencies.
- Real yields: gold pays no coupon, so higher real yields raise the opportunity cost of holding it.
- Safe-haven flows: periods of stress can bid the metal even while the dollar also strengthens.
- Liquidity: the deepest trading occurs during the overlap of London and New York hours, and spreads are typically wider outside it.
Trading hours and settlement
Spot XAUUSD trades over the counter across a global session that runs from Sunday evening to Friday evening in New York time, with a daily break for settlement. Futures and exchange-traded products follow the hours of their own exchange. Settlement conventions, contract sizes, margin requirements and the availability of physical delivery all depend on the venue, the product and the jurisdiction, and are not uniform across the market.
Often confused with
- 1 pip in xauusd
- A pip is a unit of price movement, not the instrument itself, and in XAUUSD the value of one pip depends on the ounce size of the position; the visible sign is that a pip figure is a small increment such as 0.01, while XAUUSD is a full price such as 2,350.00.
- xauusd what is it
- This is an explanatory question about the symbol, not the symbol itself, so it belongs to educational material rather than to a price feed; the visible sign is the interrogative phrasing "what is it" attached to the term.
- xauusd symbol
- XAUUSD is the trading symbol for the price of one troy ounce of gold quoted in United States dollars, where XAU is the ISO 4217 code for gold and USD is the US dollar.