Figure of the month: 195.000 tons of gold

Over the approximately 6,500 years that humanity has been prospecting, mining and processing gold, 220,000 tons of the precious metal have been extracted to date. It is therefore impressive that around 195,000 tons were traded on the world’s largest gold exchange last year alone. Added to the second-largest gold exchange, this results in a trading volume of 260,000 tons for the year 2024.

The world’s largest gold trading venue is a futures exchange

Founded in 1933, the New York Commodity Exchange COMEX is the largest exchange for gold futures. In 1994, it merged with the New York Mercantile Exchange NYMEX, currently the world’s largest commodity futures exchange. In 2008, it was taken over by the CME Group. The second-largest exchange-traded gold market is also a commodities futures exchange: founded in 2013, the Shanghai Futures Exchange has achieved an annual gold trading volume of 65,000 tons within a relatively short period. In OTC gold trading, the London Bullion Market has dominated the scene for centuries, with an average daily trading volume of 600 tons. 

Gold is one of the most traded asset classes worldwide

Recent World Gold Council data shows that in exchange-traded and OTC physical gold trading, the futures market and physically backed gold ETFs and ETCs combined result in a daily trading volume worth more than US$230 billion – significantly more than the Dow Jones Industrial Average Index, for example, which hits just under US$94 billion. Even the trading volume of T-Bills – extremely popular short-term US Treasury bonds – appears modest compared to gold at just under US$180 billion. The high trading volumes of gold guarantee tight trade margins – known as spreads – for buyers and sellers of the precious metal worldwide. In the Eurozone, investors in gold ETCs therefore benefit from spreads as narrow as those otherwise only found in blue-chip stocks.