At present, gold mainly trades gold futures and paper gold. Gold futures are traded on futures exchanges, and investors need to open futures accounts in futures companies to trade. Paper gold is generally traded on the banking platform, and investors need to open precious metal trading accounts on the banking platform.

Gold futures are futures contracts with the gold price as the transaction target at a certain point in the future, and whether gold futures are profitable or not is mainly determined by the gold price. Paper gold is a kind of book-entry gold. Investors can buy and sell "virtual" gold on the books according to the bank quotation, and earn the fluctuating price difference of gold by grasping the trend of international gold price, which is linked to the spot gold (London gold) price.

In addition, investors can also buy physical gold, trade gold stocks and gold funds, and open stock accounts and fund accounts. However, the correlation between gold inventory and gold price is not high, and it does not follow the trend of real-time gold price.