Gold
LBMA / COMEX
The only commodity that is also a currency: 5,000 years of monetary history, repriced daily in a London auction.
Top Producers
share of 2025 mine production
Top Consumers
share of 2025 consumer demand (jewellery, bar, and coin)
Main Uses
share of 2024 demand by sector (World Gold Council); investment is bars, coins, and ETFs
Top Exporters
share among the top gold bullion exporters by 2024 export value (UN Comtrade); Switzerland is the dominant refining hub and re-exporter, London the OTC clearing center
Top Importers
share among the top gold bullion importers by 2024 import value (UN Comtrade); reflects refining and re-export hubs alongside China and India as end demand
Who Holds the Gold
breakdown of roughly 216,000 tonnes of above-ground gold ever mined (World Gold Council estimates). Central banks hold about a sixth; private hands hold the rest.
Central Bank Holdings
share of roughly 36,500 tonnes of official sector gold; the US holds 8,133 tonnes
Above-ground stock
roughly 216,000 tonnes
as of 2025
Annual mine production
roughly 3,500 tonnes
as of 2024
Central bank net buying
more than 1,000 tonnes per year
2022-2024
Largest official holder
United States, 8,133 tonnes
as of 2025
COMEX GC daily volume
roughly 200,000 to 300,000 contracts
as of 2025
Price
roughly $4,200 per troy ounce; record above $5,500 set on January 28, 2026
as of June 2026
Gold is element 79, first coined as money in Lydia around 640 BC and never fully demonetized since. Nearly all the gold ever mined, roughly 216,000 tonnes, still exists above ground, so annual mine supply of roughly 3,500 tonnes adds less than 2 percent to the stock each year. That is why gold trades like a currency rather than a consumable: the price is set by the willingness of existing holders to keep holding, not by this year's production cost. The dollar price floated free in 1971 when President Nixon closed the gold window and ended Bretton Woods convertibility at $35 per ounce. Since then gold has been the market's referendum on real interest rates, the dollar, and official-sector credibility.
The structure of demand shifted decisively after February 2022, when Western sanctions froze roughly half of Russia's foreign exchange reserves. Central banks, net sellers through the 2000s, bought more than 1,000 tonnes in each of 2022, 2023, and 2024, led by China, Poland, Turkey, and India. Combined with Asian retail buying and renewed Western ETF inflows, that official bid pushed gold to repeated nominal records: above $2,700 per ounce in late 2024, through $3,000 in March 2025 and $4,000 in October 2025, to a peak above $5,500 in late January 2026. Jewellery, led by India and China, remains the largest single use at roughly 40 percent of annual demand, with bar, coin, and ETF investment close behind and a small electronics base.
The market itself runs on two rails. London is the spot and forward market, quoted loco London against unallocated accounts, benchmarked by the LBMA Gold Price auction at 10:30am and 3:00pm. New York is COMEX, where the 100-ounce GC future is the world's deepest listed gold instrument, turning over more than $100 billion of notional value daily at 2026 prices. The exchange for physical spread links the two, and when it dislocates, as it did on US tariff fears between December 2024 and March 2025, refiners recast 400-ounce London bars into kilobars and 100-ounce bars and fly them west.
How It Trades
| Venue | OTC loco London (LBMA) for spot and forwards; COMEX (CME Group) for futures and options; Shanghai Gold Exchange for the Chinese onshore market |
| Benchmark contract | COMEX Gold Futures (GC); LBMA Gold Price auction as the OTC reference |
| Contract size | 100 troy ounces |
| Price terms | USD per troy ounce |
| Settlement | GC is physically delivered into COMEX-licensed depositories; OTC trades settle loco London over unallocated accounts two business days after trade; the LBMA Gold Price prints twice daily at 10:30am and 3:00pm London time |
| Typical curve | Persistent contango reflecting dollar interest rates minus the gold lease rate plus storage; the curve only inverts during acute physical squeezes |
| Liquidity | Among the deepest of all commodity markets: COMEX GC regularly trades 200,000 to 300,000 contracts per day (more than $100 billion notional at 2026 prices), and LBMA clearing transfers average roughly 20 million ounces per day |
Where It Trades
approximate share of global daily traded volume across futures and OTC, 2025; the OTC split is an estimate from LBMA clearing statistics rather than reported turnover
Supply and Demand
Top producers
- China: roughly 380 tonnes per year, the largest miner since 2007
- Russia: roughly 310 tonnes per year
- Australia: roughly 290 tonnes per year
- Canada: roughly 200 tonnes per year
- United States: roughly 160 tonnes per year, mostly Nevada
- Recycling adds roughly 1,200 to 1,400 tonnes per year on top of roughly 3,500 tonnes of mine supply
Mine supply is geographically diverse and no single country dominates, which is one reason gold carries less supply-shock risk than the PGMs. All-in sustaining costs for the major miners averaged roughly $1,400 to $1,500 per ounce in 2024, leaving the industry with historically wide margins at 2025 prices.
Top consumers
- India: the largest jewellery market, with demand concentrated in the autumn wedding and festival season
- China: the largest combined jewellery plus bar-and-coin market
- Central banks: more than 1,000 tonnes per year of net purchases in 2022 through 2024
- Western ETF investors: holdings of roughly 3,200 tonnes, led by SPDR GLD
Major uses
- Jewellery: roughly 40 percent of annual demand
- Bars, coins, and ETFs: roughly 25 to 30 percent
- Central bank reserves: roughly 20 to 25 percent in recent years
- Electronics, dentistry, and other industry: roughly 7 percent
Top Ten Central Bank Gold Holders
| Rank | Country | Tonnes | Share of official holdings |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | 8,133 | 22.3% |
| 2 | Germany | 3,350 | 9.2% |
| 3 | Italy | 2,452 | 6.7% |
| 4 | France | 2,437 | 6.7% |
| 5 | Russia | 2,333 | 6.4% |
| 6 | China | 2,304 | 6.3% |
| 7 | Switzerland | 1,040 | 2.8% |
| 8 | India | 880 | 2.4% |
| 9 | Japan | 846 | 2.3% |
| 10 | Turkey | 595 | 1.6% |
World official holdings roughly 36,500 tonnes as of late 2025. Source: World Gold Council and IMF International Financial Statistics. China is widely believed to hold more than it officially reports.
Who Holds the Gold: Three Stories
tonnes; US and China are official central bank holdings (IMF IFS, World Gold Council). India is the estimated stock held privately by households, the largest private hoard on earth; dashed because it is an industry estimate, not a reported reserve figure.
What Moves the Price
- Real US interest rates: the opportunity cost of a zero-yield asset
- The trade-weighted dollar
- Central bank purchases, which became the dominant marginal bid after the February 2022 reserve freeze
- ETF flows, the fastest-moving Western investment channel
- Asian physical demand: Indian wedding seasonality and Chinese retail buying
- Geopolitical and banking stress, which triggers safe-haven flows
- Mine cost inflation, which sets a slow-moving floor near the cost curve's upper quartile
Moments That Made the Market
1944
Bretton Woods fixes the dollar to gold at $35 per ounce and other currencies to the dollar
1971
Nixon closes the gold window in August; the dollar price of gold floats for the first time
1980
Gold spikes to $850 in January on inflation and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, a record that stands in nominal terms for 28 years
1999
First Central Bank Gold Agreement caps coordinated European official selling after the UK announces auctions near the cycle low
2011
Gold reaches $1,920 in September in the aftermath of the financial crisis and the US debt-ceiling standoff
2015
The century-old London gold fix is replaced in March by the electronic LBMA Gold Price auction following benchmark-manipulation scandals
2022
Western sanctions freeze roughly half of Russia's FX reserves in February; central banks buy a record 1,082 tonnes of gold that year
2024
Gold sets repeated nominal records above $2,700 as official-sector buying exceeds 1,000 tonnes for a third straight year
2025
Tariff fears blow out the COMEX-London EFP early in the year, pulling hundreds of tonnes into New York vaults; the record run extends through $3,000 in March and $4,000 in October
2026
Gold peaks above $5,500 per ounce on January 28 after a 60 percent gain in 2025, its best year since 1979, then settles back above $4,000
What Changed Since the 2010 Handbook Era
- Central banks flipped from coordinated net sellers under the Gold Agreements to record buyers of more than 1,000 tonnes per year after the 2022 Russian reserve freeze
- The twice-daily telephone fix among five banks became the electronic, audited LBMA Gold Price auction in March 2015
- ETFs matured from a novelty into a roughly 3,200-tonne holding that moves the price weekly
- China built a parallel onshore market: the Shanghai Gold Exchange now anchors the world's largest physical delivery volumes
- GOFO, the published gold forward rate, was discontinued in 2015; the forward market now quotes swap rates bilaterally
- The price rose from roughly $900 in 2009 to above $4,000 in late 2025, while mine cost inflation roughly tripled the industry cost floor over the same period