The oldest trade, priced live

The spot price is what the metal is worth for immediate settlement, as opposed to a futures price for delivery on some later date. Trading spot gold as a CFD means your position tracks that live price. Nothing is ever delivered — you close the position and settle the difference in cash, in your account currency.

No. A CFD is a contract on the price movement, not a claim on bullion. That is the point of it for most traders: you get the full price exposure without storage, insurance, assay, or the spread a dealer takes on physical metal in both directions. If your goal is to hold metal for its own sake rather than to trade the price, physical ownership is the right instrument, not this one.

Because a metal price is always a price in something. XAU/USD is gold in dollars, XAU/EUR gold in euros — and they can move differently on the same day, since a dollar move changes one without changing the other. If your account and your thinking are in euros, quoting gold in euros removes a currency view you may not have wanted to take.

Real interest rates most of all — metal pays no yield, so it competes with what cash earns after inflation. Beyond that: the dollar, central-bank buying, and demand for a haven during stress. Silver, platinum and palladium carry a second driver that gold largely does not, which is industrial demand, and that makes them more volatile than gold rather than less.

No, and treating it that way is a common way to be surprised. Silver is a much smaller market with a heavy industrial component, so it moves further in both directions than gold on the same news, and it can decouple from gold entirely when manufacturing demand shifts. Size a silver position for its own volatility, not for gold’s.

The spread when you open and close, and a swap on anything held past the daily rollover. The swap reflects the cost of financing the metal and the interest-rate difference against the quote currency; it can be a debit or a credit depending on direction and prevailing rates. It is small day to day and meaningful over months.

Spot metals trade nearly around the clock from the Sunday open to the Friday close, with a short daily break at the rollover. Liquidity is deepest when London and New York overlap, and thinnest in the hours after the New York close — where spreads can widen and a stop is more likely to be reached on a thin move.

Leverage depends on your account tier and the specific instrument; gold typically allows more than platinum or palladium, which are thinner markets. Whatever the maximum, treat it as a ceiling rather than a target — the margin required to open a position is not the same as the position size that is sensible to carry against your balance.