Spot gold is the standard for the value of an ounce of gold for trading purposes. Among gold traders it is the most important information that they can have their hand on. Even though purchases from, large gold traders will often range from five percent above to five percent below the spot gold standard, most traders still use the current spot gold price as the point of reference for the value of gold.

Spot gold trading is like trading other commodities on the market. You are basically placing a wager on what direction is the gold market going to take and placing a trade based on what you believe the price will be in the future, most often four to six months in the future. Here are some of the things that you need to know about spot gold trading if you plan on investing in gold.

Identify the spot price of the gold. This is the current price for an ounce of gold. There are a lot of websites that list the spot prices of gold. This information is used as the basis for spot gold trading decisions.

What you need to do is study what makes gold prices move. Most often than not you are buying gold in U.S. dollars. This entails that if the dollar strong, gold prices drop. If the dollar weakens, gold spot prices go up. Spot gold prices often strengthen during the last quarter of the year due to the Christmas season sales especially gold jewellery.

Select what kind of gold you want to trade. Gold can come in either coin or bar form. Gold coins usually come in one ounce coins for spot gold trading purposes. Gold bars come in one ounce, 5 ounce, ten ounce and one hundred ounce bars.

Determine the spot price of major gold traders and buyers. Once you have purchased gold coins or gold bars you can now determine the spot price for a given gold coin or gold bar. Large companies can be contacted and you can inquire about the current buy-sell spot prices.