Gold is very dumb, it is like SPX but dumber. The market is segmented into 3 major exchanges - COMEX, LBMA (London), and Shanghai There are some smaller OTC markets like India, but those don't really matter that much
Gold is a physical commodity that has a cost of carry, but it's not volatile. With few exceptions, the futures term structure is very stable, and usually the exceptions are due to exogenous shocks like I think COVID (if I remember correctly) and Trump's tariff stuff.
Gold is largely a fungible commodity, so any arbitrages between exchanges are related to the cost of shipping as well as any legal restrictions (this gets important). That's why during the tariff, physical gold (spot) traded differently than paper gold (ETFs) which track futures
China/Shanghai, for example, regulates tightly the amount of gold that can enter the country, and this leads to divergences between the more free flowing London and US markets
Because of this, a verifiable alpha (I don't trade this, so I don't care, but whatever someone will be mad at me for this) is the Shanghai gold premium - the difference between LBMA and Shanghai prices. LBMA is considered "the" exchange mostly for historical reasons
Broadly speaking over the past decade plus, the largest driver of gold purchasing has been China, mostly because the onshore yuan is a heavily centrally manipulated currency and because currency controls in the country are very significant This is also why Tether is popular
The other large-ish purchaser are central banks, but they also regularly publish on a lagged basis when they buy gold. Sometimes they sell gold, which led to the famous Brown Bottom around 2000 when the UK did dumb shit and sold all its gold reserves at the bottom
Gold miners of course are the largest source of production, and recycled gold is a smaller part of the market, about 30%. Gold miners tend to sell, but also do some insanely stupid shit because they're mostly but not entirely retarded with poor management
They also used to hedge more, but then lost out in the bull run in the 2000s, and then stopped hedging, and then all died in the 2010s again because they're not particularly good at timing the market (just like bitcoin miners, but more useless)
Anyway more on intraday mechanics - The most active time in the day for gold tends to be the intersection between Shanghai and London, with prices largely trading predictably post London close. This has interesting converse ramifications -- intraday momentum on gold in
the US session becomes more indicative of Western speculators, while overnight is more indicative of Asian buying (with a lesser degree from LBMA trading). A pattern like today is very clear Western speculation.
Twice a day, the global benchmark price for gold is "fixed" by the LBMA and this happens at 10:30 AM and 3 PM London time which tend to be significant times of activity for gold traders, and weird effects can tend to happen around those times
Broadly speaking, most of the interesting movement on gold in normal times tends to happen overnight (for the US trader), specifically between the hours of 3 AM EST and 10 AM EST (more or less). Gold is significantly impacted by the presence or lack of Asian and British traders.
Gold, like many physical commodities, tends to trade with an inverted spot-vol correlation, but mostly for speculative reasons. Oil, for example, trades with +ve spot-vol because of hedger dynamics on the buyer side (e.g. airlines buy calls to hedge oil risk)
Simply put we can look at Gold VIX as a pretty strong indicator of speculative peaks, with today being the highest close of GVX since 2011. These also coincidentally tend to mark strong tops in gold, likely due to high speculative fever as well as call delta expiring
China’s central bank is buying gold month by month, but in very tiny quantities. Since April of this year most of the Shanghai gold premium is from Chinese retail investors buying to hedge yuan depreciation and capital control, until September when it has been primarily Western.
Thinking about it mechanically increases in volatility increase the delta of OTM calls which increase soft delta related buying, but as volatility abates, we should see the opposite dynamic come into play
We can see in the last week gold skew is now firmly tilted towards calls, which increases the likelihood we see an unwind driven by volatility contractoon
Additionally of course CTAs are max long gold at the moment due to the strength of the underlying trend, with CTAs traditionally having significant gold allocation as well as other PMs. This contributes reflexively both to the trend and the resulting puke from trend breaks
If I had to guess gold peaks before October 28