Gold Price Today: Live Chart, History, and Outlook

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The gold price here is a COMEX (CME Group) futures quote in U.S. dollars per troy ounce, timestamped in UTC. XAUUSD is the symbol traders use for gold against the dollar, but the number is a futures contract price, not the spot price that dealers and many forex platforms quote. The two track each other closely without being identical, and neither equals what a coin shop charges for physical metal.

What the gold price measures

Gold is priced per troy ounce, which is about 31.1035 grams. That is heavier than the ordinary (avoirdupois) ounce of about 28.35 grams, so converting a quote to grams or kilograms needs the troy figure.

Three prices are worth keeping apart:

• Spot price: the price for immediate delivery of wholesale bullion. Most headlines that say “gold hit a record” refer to spot.
• Futures price: the price agreed today for delivery on a later date. A futures price reflects spot plus the cost of carry, mainly the interest forgone on the cash and the cost of storing and insuring the metal until delivery. When interest rates are higher, that gap tends to widen, and it shrinks as the contract approaches expiry.
• Retail price: what a buyer pays for coins or bars, which adds a dealer premium for fabrication, distribution and margin on top of the wholesale price. Selling back to a dealer typically happens below spot.

Because futures contracts expire, quote services move from one contract month to the next. A chart built from these quotes can show a small jump at a roll date that reflects the switch between contracts rather than a change in the market.

How to read the quote and performance figures

The previous close is the reference point for the daily change. The day range shows the lowest and highest trades of the current session, and the 52-week range shows the low and high over the past year. Where the current price sits inside the 52-week range tells you how far gold has come from its recent extremes; it does not tell you which way it will move next.

Each return period (1D, 5D, 1M, 6M, YTD, 1Y) uses the same calculation:

Percentage change = (current price − starting price) ÷ starting price × 100

A hypothetical example: if gold closed at $4,000 one day and trades at $4,100 the next, the daily change is (4,100 − 4,000) ÷ 4,000 × 100 = +2.5%. Only the starting price changes between periods, so they can point in different directions at once: a strong week can sit inside a weak six months, and a negative year-to-date figure can coexist with a positive one-year figure if gold rose late last year and then gave part of that back.

Percentage moves are not symmetric. A 20% fall followed by a 20% gain leaves the price 4% below where it started, because the gain is calculated on a smaller base.

What moves gold prices

Gold pays no interest or dividend, so much of its pricing comes down to what investors give up by holding it and what they want protection from.

• Interest rates and the Federal Reserve: higher rates make yield-bearing assets such as Treasury notes relatively more attractive, which raises the opportunity cost of owning gold. Signals that the Fed will hold or raise rates have been a recurring headwind; expectations of cuts work the other way.
• Inflation: gold is widely held as a store of value when the purchasing power of money is falling. Inflation also feeds back through rates: an energy shock that pushes prices up can push the Fed toward tightening, which weighs on gold.
• The U.S. dollar: since gold is priced in dollars, a weaker dollar makes it cheaper for buyers using other currencies, which can lift demand.
• Central bank buying: central banks hold gold as a reserve asset, and a shift in reserves away from the dollar and Treasurys toward gold is a core argument in many bullish outlooks.
• The debasement trade: investors who expect currencies to lose value shift money into hard assets such as gold.
• Geopolitical risk: conflict can raise demand for gold as a hedge, though a war that drives up oil and inflation can also strengthen the case for higher rates, so the net effect is not one-directional.
• Investor behavior: some buyers follow momentum. Chinese retail investors have been described as buying on the way up and stepping back once a rally stalls, which can weaken demand in flat periods.
• Seasonality: one market researcher identifies roughly the 134th to 207th trading days of the year as gold’s historically strongest stretch, while cautioning that seasonal patterns are a clue, not a buy or sell signal.

Reading gold price forecasts

A gold price forecast from a bank or asset manager is a conditional estimate, not a prediction to rely on. Most published outlooks come as a base case with a bull case and a bear case, each tied to an assumption, typically the Fed’s rate path, the dollar’s direction and the pace of central bank and investor buying. When those assumptions change, forecasts get revised, sometimes by hundreds of dollars in a single update. The useful question is which assumption a forecast depends on: a bear case built on rate hikes and a bull case built on renewed hedging demand describe different economic paths, and no target settles in advance which one unfolds.

Limits of the figures

The quote reflects the last trade as of the timestamp shown, from a single data source, for one futures contract. It is not a price at which any individual can buy physical gold, and a broker’s XAU/USD price will include its own spread. Return figures ignore costs such as storage, insurance, dealer premiums, spreads and taxes, all of which reduce what an actual holder earns.