Metals

Precious metals give exposure to gold and silver priced against a currency. StoicMarkets quotes spot gold and silver against the US dollar as XAU/USD and XAG/USD, the same metals against the euro as XAU/EUR and XAG/EUR, plus a smaller gold contract, XAUmini, for tighter position sizing. Gold has held value for thousands of years and trades as the market's main store of safety. Silver splits its role between a monetary metal and an industrial input. Its use in solar panels, electronics and batteries links silver's demand to the industrial cycle.

Gold's biggest driver is the level of real interest rates, meaning yields after inflation. When real yields fall, holding metal that pays no interest costs less, and demand tends to rise. Inflation expectations, the Federal Reserve's policy path and the strength of the dollar all feed into that. Steady buying by central banks in countries like China and Poland adds to demand. Safe-haven flows lift gold during geopolitical stress. Silver tends to follow gold but with a larger swing, and traders watch the gold-silver ratio to judge which metal looks stretched. The euro-quoted contracts, XAU/EUR and XAG/EUR, strip out the direct dollar exchange-rate effect for euro-based traders.

Metals trade nearly around the clock across the week with a short daily break. Spreads on metals are quoted in points rather than pips. Gold can be traded with leverage up to 1:200 on our MT5 server, a rate set per symbol rather than by account type. Metal prices can move fast around US data releases, so margin can be used up quickly. Metals CFDs are leveraged, and a sharp reversal can cost more than the margin held against the position. Because gold trades in dollars, a strong or weak dollar also shifts the price for traders working in other currencies.