Gold futures is to formulate a standardized gold futures contract and list it on the futures exchange. Like other futures products, it also delivers contracts at a specified time. The ultimate goal of futures trading is not to transfer the ownership of goods, but to avoid the spot price risk by buying and selling futures contracts.

Generally speaking, buyers and sellers of gold futures sell and buy back contracts with the same number as the previous contracts before the contract expires, that is, close positions, and do not really deliver real money and silver. The profit or loss of each transaction is equal to the difference between two contracts in opposite directions. This way of buying and selling is what people usually call "speculating in gold". Gold futures contract trading only needs a margin of about 10% of the transaction amount as the investment cost, with high leverage and a small amount of funds to promote large transactions. Therefore, gold futures trading is also called "margin trading".