Market & Spot

Spot moves continuously when LBMA and COMEX are open — roughly 23 hours a day, Monday through Friday — and the number on your phone at 9 AM is rarely the number a refiner quotes at 3 PM. You're not here to trade futures. You're here because a 5% spot move on the 14k chain in your safe deposit box is real money, and you want to know whether it's worth waiting two weeks to sell.

This page is the why behind the chart. We cover what moves precious-metal prices, how the LBMA fixing translates that into the headline refiners reference, and why published spot almost never matches what you'll get paid. The precious-metals basics page covers karat math and troy-ounce conventions, and the grades and assays guide covers how a refiner values a mixed lot.

What moves precious-metal prices

Gold and silver don't move because of one thing — half a dozen forces push on them at different horizons. You don't need to model it; you need to recognize when one has dominated the last few weeks so you can decide whether to sell now or wait. Six drivers do most of the work:

• Real interest rates are the dominant gold driver. Real rates = nominal rates minus expected inflation, and gold pays no yield — when real rates fall, gold's opportunity cost drops and price rises. The 10-year TIPS yield published by the St. Louis Fed (FRED) is the cleanest single proxy; gold moves inversely to it on a multi-month horizon.
• Central bank buying has structurally lifted gold demand since 2022. China, India, Russia, Turkey, and Poland have been net buyers, adding 600–1,000 tonnes a year. The World Gold Council publishes monthly reserve changes.
• US dollar strength matters because gold is priced in dollars. A weaker DXY tends to lift gold; a stronger DXY compresses it as non-US buyers see effective price increases in local currency.
• Geopolitical risk and safe-haven demand spike during crises — war, banking stress, sovereign debt scares. Spikes are episodic and often retraced.
• Industrial demand for silver makes silver more cyclical. Roughly 50% of silver demand is industrial — solar, electronics, electrification — versus ~10% for gold. When manufacturing PMIs roll over, silver takes it harder.
• Mining supply constraints are slow-moving but real. Peruvian and Chilean output drives global silver mine production; deeper-shaft costs lift gold's all-in sustaining cost every year. The USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries track per-country production.

For most scrap sellers, this analysis rarely earns its keep on a small lot. If you're sitting on $2,000 of scrap gold, modeling the TIPS yield is not where your time should go. Watch the live gold price and live silver price for trend context, recognize when something unusual is happening (a 5%+ weekly move in either direction), and otherwise transact when convenient. Macro matters at $10k+ lots, where a 3% timing edge is meaningful money.

LBMA fixings — what they are and why they matter

The London Bullion Market Association runs the auctions that produce the headline reference prices for gold and silver. Gold has two fixings per day — 10:30 AM and 3:00 PM London time. Silver has one daily fix at noon London. These used to be phone calls among five member banks; today they're electronic, run on an ICE-administered platform, and broadcast in seconds.

The fixings matter because a meaningful chunk of physical-market commerce references them rather than continuous spot. Refiner contracts for industrial gold often settle at "LBMA PM fix on the day of receipt." If your refiner's quote sheet says "PM fix minus 2%," that's the number you'll get — not whatever Kitco shows when you happen to look.

US scrap buyers, by contrast, mostly quote off continuous COMEX spot (front-month gold and silver futures, GC=F and SI=F), which trades nearly around the clock and is what most live tickers display — including the ones on this site. Practical upshot: if a refiner says "fix" they mean LBMA; if a coin shop or yard says "spot" they almost always mean COMEX. The gap is usually small but can hit 0.5–1% on volatile days.

Spot vs. physical premium

Spot is wholesale — the number an institutional bullion dealer pays another in 400-oz Good Delivery bars for next-day London settlement. The chart price is not a price you can transact at, in either direction.

When you BUY assayed product, you pay spot plus a premium. Typical: a 1 oz American Gold Eagle runs spot + $50–100; a generic gold round runs spot + $25–40; a Silver Eagle runs spot + $5–8. The premium pays for fabrication, brand, dealer margin, and the certainty the product is what it claims to be.

When you SELL, the math inverts. You get spot minus dealer margin. For recognized bullion the gap is small (Eagles buy back at or near spot). For scrap jewelry, dental gold, or unassayed bars the discount widens: a typical refiner pays 90–95% of spot on the gold content of clean melt material; a coin shop reselling to a refiner pays 80–90%. Worked example at $2,400 spot, 1 oz gold equivalent: an Eagle buys back around $2,395; a clean 14k chain at a refiner nets $2,184–$2,280; the same chain at a pawn shop nets $1,800. Same metal, three very different payouts. The refining and dealer-types page breaks down which buyer fits which lot.

How to read a precious-metals chart

You don't need TradingView fluency. Open Kitco, BullionVault, or the live gold-price chart on this site, set the window to 30 days, and look at three things: the trend (up, down, sideways), the range (high vs. low), and any single-day spikes that look out of pattern.

Gold normally runs 1–3% per week; in a crisis week — banking stress, war, an unexpected Fed move — you'll see 5–8% range. Silver runs roughly 1.5–2x that. Don't sell into the bottom of a panic unless cash flow forces it, and don't chase a top — tops are only obvious in retrospect, and the seller waiting "just one more week" for a higher print frequently watches the rally fade. The silver price page carries the same 30-day window for the other major metal.

When (not) to time the market

Most scrap sellers should not try to time spot. The price you'd capture waiting six months is usually less than the friction cost — storage, theft risk, opportunity cost, and the fact that life competes with patience. If you have $1,500 of scrap gold and 5% upside is worth $75, and waiting introduces any risk at all, just sell.

Two real exceptions. One: large lots — $10,000+ — where 5% timing matters more than urgency and waiting four to six weeks isn't disruptive. At that scale, watching the 10-year TIPS yield and the LBMA fix history is reasonable due diligence. Two: panic crashes — rare, once or twice a decade — where a clearly mispriced flush sets up a 3–6-week mean reversion. March 2020 was an example; gold dropped 12% in a week before recovering.

What you should not do: try to call tops. Selling at the peak is luck, not skill, even for desk traders. Selling into strength when you're already happy is a fine outcome. Holding for three more percent and watching ten evaporate is a bad one. Anchoring on "but it was higher last month" is the most expensive cognitive bias in the selling guide.

Gold vs. silver — different mood, different math

Gold is a monetary metal — driven by real rates, currency moves, central-bank flows, and risk-off demand. It's what central banks hold as a reserve asset and what investors flee to during stress. Less than 10% of gold demand is industrial; the rest is investment, jewelry (which is partially investment in much of Asia), and central-bank reserves.

Silver is monetary AND industrial. Roughly half of silver demand goes into solar, electronics, EV wiring, and brazing alloys. That makes silver higher-beta — it amplifies whatever gold is doing in both directions. The gold-to-silver ratio (gold price ÷ silver price) telegraphs relative valuation: long-run average is ~50:1, recent decade range is 70–100:1. When the ratio is wide (90+), silver has historically outperformed on the next leg up; narrow (40s), gold has outperformed. Not a trading signal — a context check. If you're holding both, a wide ratio is a reason to lean toward selling the gold first. Check the gold price and silver price and divide.

Frequently asked questions