Market Guides
Product by product guides to trading currencies, indices, commodities, shares and fixed income.
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EUR/JPY and GBP/JPY: Yen Crosses
EUR/JPY and GBP/JPY are yen crosses: the price of one euro or one pound in Japanese yen, with no US dollar in the quote. Each is built from two dollar...
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USD/ZAR and USD/MXN: EM Currencies
USD/ZAR and USD/MXN are the US dollar priced in South African rand and Mexican pesos. They are among the most actively traded emerging market pairs, and they behave differently from...
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XAUUSD: What Moves Gold
XAUUSD is the price of one troy ounce of gold in US dollars. XAU is the international code for gold and USD is the dollar, so the symbol is quoted...
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Gold Market Hours: Open and Close
Gold trades almost 24 hours a day, five days a week. The market opens on Sunday at 18:00 New York time, which is 22:00 UTC in summer and 23:00 UTC...
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Silver vs Gold: The Gold-Silver Ratio
Silver and gold are both precious metals priced in US dollars per troy ounce, but they behave differently. More than half of silver demand comes from industry, so it responds...
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Index CFD Trading Hours: US500 and DE40
An index has two timetables. The cash session is when the underlying shares trade: 09:30 to 16:00 New York time for the US500 and 09:00 to 17:30 Frankfurt time for...
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WTI vs Brent Crude: Key Differences
WTI and Brent are the two main benchmark prices for crude oil. West Texas Intermediate is US oil delivered by pipeline to Cushing, Oklahoma, and trades on NYMEX in New...
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What Moves Crude Oil Prices
Crude oil prices are set by the balance between supply and demand, and by expectations about both. In practice five things do most of the work: OPEC+ production decisions, US...
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Natural Gas Trading: Why So Volatile
Natural gas is the most volatile of the major commodities. The US benchmark, Henry Hub, is quoted in dollars per million British thermal units and trades on NYMEX. Demand depends...
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Copper: Why Traders Call It Dr Copper
Copper is nicknamed “Dr Copper” because traders joke that it has a PhD in economics: the metal goes into buildings, power grids, vehicles and electronics, so its price tends to...
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US500: How an S&P 500 Index CFD Works
US500 is the name many brokers give to a CFD that tracks the S&P 500, the index of about 500 of the largest companies listed in the United States. The...
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Nasdaq 100 (US100): The Tech Index
The Nasdaq 100 is an index of the 100 largest non-financial companies listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange. Technology and technology-related businesses make up well over half of it, so...