I won't help you look up the concept, because the threshold of futures is very high, the risk is too great, or it's scary. He can make you not have a cigarette left.
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At present, there are many gold investment tools in the gold market, such as gold spot, gold futures, gold options, gold swaps, gold leveraged contracts, gold certificates, gold depositary receipts and so on.
The main forms of physical gold in the gold spot market are gold bars and ingots, as well as gold coins, gold medals and jewelry. Gold bars include low-purity placer gold and high-purity strip gold, and generally weigh 400 ounces. Market participants mainly include gold producers, refiners, central banks, investors and other demanders. Among them, gold traders buy and sell in the market, brokers earn commissions and spreads from them, and banks finance them. The spot price difference of gold is generally 0.5- 1 USD per ounce. For example, the New York gold market closed at $ 297.50/8.00 on Friday, and closed at $ 299.00/300.00 the day before. The ounce is the unit of measurement, and 1 ounce is equivalent to 28.35 grams.
Spot investment in gold has two defects: it has to pay for storage and security, and there is no interest income from holding gold. Therefore, by buying and selling futures to temporarily transfer ownership, you can avoid handling fees and gain income. Each futures contract is 100 ounce. Central banks are generally unwilling to make profits by transferring ownership, so the gold lending market came into being.
Gold option trading means that the option buyer has the right to buy and sell gold spot or futures at the agreed price after paying the option fee, which is divided into call option and put option.
Gold swap transaction is that gold holders exchange gold bars for money, and when the expiration agreement expires, they buy back gold bars at the agreed forward price. It is said that the central banks of South Africa and the former Soviet Union all prefer this trading method. Recently, the gold reserves in the euro zone rose by 654.38+003 billion euros, because the gold swap contracts of countries in the region expired.
On the basis of these gold trading tools, many gold investment tools have been derived. In fact, investors can also buy and sell shares of gold companies in the stock market and indirectly invest in gold. Hathaway, the investment manager of Tocqueville, an American gold fund, is keen on investing in gold stocks. He founded the fund on June 1998. At that time, technology stocks were the "overlord" in the market, while gold stocks were regarded as "untouchables" and were the least optimistic. However, after the fund opened its position, it achieved quite strong performance, with the rate of return rising from 5% in 1998 to 2 1.3% at the end of 200 1 and even reaching 28.34% recently. Historically, precious metal stocks have always been a safe haven for investors in uncertain times. The recession of American economy is the most uncertain period. First, the technology bubble burst, then the "9 1 1" incident, the financial crisis in Argentina, and finally the bad influence of the "Enron incident". Therefore, gold stocks naturally become investment choices. In fact, during the bear markets of 1973 and 1974, gold stocks performed well and lasted for ten years. Another American gold fund, First Eagle, with assets of about17.7 million US dollars, also achieved a high yield of 37.3% in 2006, 5438+0. Since the beginning of this year, the yield has reached about 28.5%, and the yield of 1 as of March 7 is as high as 52. 14%!