why would you trade spot gold, and not GC (Comex)?

typical spread for XAU/USD is 30 pips (3 ticks), while GC is about 1~2 ticks(most 1 tick ). The leverage for GC is more or less the same with Spot. So what's the advantage trading XAU/USD? Right now, I can only list 2 poinits:

1,Can trade less units, not just standard order.

2,No need to rotate positions before the settlement(for mid/long term traders).

These advantages are just trivial compared to the trading cost, so trading GC should be better choice, what's your opinions?

Thanks

I agree. Anytime you can trade a futures contract on a real exchange as opposed to a cash on MT4, that is the better choice, expecially for short-term trades.

i have traded futures GC and the slippage sometimes can be quite significant when there are violent moves. so slippage plus commission does add up.

GC is not extremely liquid, so I agree, there is a small slippage problem, especially out of market open times.

Man, GC is not extremely liquid??!!! What are you talking about??? It's the most liquid gold contract around....Average daily volume is between 170k to 200k contracts...You just need to look at the correct contract....

For example, the most liquid GC contract right now is the Feb-2011 one...When the Feb-2011 contract expires, the next liquid one will be the Apr-2011 one not the March one and so on....That's probably why you are under the impression that GC is not that liquid...


Regards,

Nader

cash gold is like forex it totally dwarfs futures contracts.....google the amount of gold traded daily in london if you haven't already done so...

also cash gold is less susceptible to spikes than gc

beeb

yep the future : spread is smaller and the broker will not cheat you , not hunt stop you ....