Spot price, link to dealer prices and spot price apps.

[Atomic47]

Hi Folks

Okey dokey. The spot price goes up and down and obviously its better to buy in a dip.

So the questions are, I presume that web dealers prices are linked to automatically adjust price in line with spot price ? 

What are the best ways to track the spot price. Phone apps ? I see a lot on the app store but which will work best for tracking/notification of dips etc ? 

Ta

Atomic47

[BackyardBullion]

Most dealers will have their prices linked live to spot price and often when "checking out" via their shop pages you get a window of a few minutes before a live price is updated. 

As to checking spot price, I have just gotten into the habit of having Bullion By Post as one of my home tabs on my browser, so I just have that open every now and again to check on live prices. 

[Rll1288]

If you know how to use Excel you can link it to live prices from any website.... that way you can reval any position or build your own pricing matrix 

[Atomic47]

1 minute ago, Rll1288 said:

If you know how to use Excel you can link it to live prices from any website.... that way you can reval any position or build your own pricing matrix 

Ah. Interesting. Im not an Excel expert but the misses is ! I will ask her to have a look for me.

[Rll1288]

10 minutes ago, Atomic47 said:

Ah. Interesting. Im not an Excel expert but the misses is ! I will ask her to have a look for me.

under data you can add a source and I select via WEB... I use BBP url and then you should see a field called "metals" which has all the pricings for Gold, Silver and platinum.

 

Edited June 28, 2021 by Rll1288

[Bimetallic]

Does anyone know what spot price Bullion By Post uses? i.e. where they get their spot price?

An underexposed and annoying issue with "the" spot price is that no one seems to know what price they're talking about, or where it's coming from. There is no such thing as the spot price for gold or silver, as in a worldwide spot price independent of any specific market or exchange. The only spot prices that actually exist come from specific exchanges like COMEX, Shanghai, etc. I have no idea what is normally used by British dealers. There might be an exchange in London – I'm not sure. (I mean for up-to-the-second spot price, not things like the LBMA gold fix that happens twice each weekday.)

I posted about this last year, asking where people were getting their spot price, meaning which market or exchange. As I recall, no one knew. Even the owner of this forum didn't know where his spot price was coming from, the one displayed at the top of the site – he said it was the World Spot Price, but that doesn't exist.

The spot price feeds on different dealer websites differ significantly, and I've never figured out why that is. There was a 42 cent difference at one point between APMEX and SilverPrice.org, and that was when silver was under $15.00 per ounce, so it was a huge disparity.

[Rll1288]

Ok so all the prices you see that state spot price are sourced from the exchanges.... Ok the biggest market for metals is the London Metals Exchange... then you have the various exchanges throughout the world.. Metals (like all commodities) can be traded on various exchanges.  Remember the Baring Brothers fandango where the guy was trading the difference between Asian exchanges (arbitrage) 🙂

Now I am not a PM expert as I only used to trade FX. Spot pricing can mean different things but in the FX market it meant value 2 days forward (working days usually) and the prices that you can google are not live prices, they are delayed by around 15 minutes as the main data suppliers like Reuters, Bloomberg charge for feeds into the trading arms of various institutions so will not supply actual rate in real time. If you look at Kitco they show trading in PM's across The New York exchange and another for other markets i.e. London, Asia etc.. and again is probably sourced from the big data suppliers and shown consolidated and really only shows when each market is open and not any differences. The dealers within Banks would have direct feeds and across all open exchanges and I am petty sure they will be different to that shown as they will not be delayed (one of my biggest costs were data for trading floors) 🙂

Therefore World Spot price is just a consolidation of all the feeds to simplify things and as with FX pricing is very liquid and can move many times per second dependent on bids/offers and orders on either side of the price gap. The difference between the bid and offer is called the spread and again is determined by market forces and size of orders and again am sure that real time pricing the spread will be closer then shown. My interpretation of why pricing can be different from site to site is basically on how and where they source from due to the delayed feeds as well as some may update as and when a change occurs where others may just take a price on a minute by minute basis or more (if you get  my drift) some may even source from other secondary websites and thus delays could occur. I take feeds into a Spreadsheet and sometimes it doesn't refresh and you may see some delays in updates etc.

I hope that helps... 

[LawrenceChard]

On 28/06/2021 at 08:11, BackyardBullion said:

Most dealers will have their prices linked live to spot price and often when "checking out" via their shop pages you get a window of a few minutes before a live price is updated. 

As to checking spot price, I have just gotten into the habit of having Bullion By Post as one of my home tabs on my browser, so I just have that open every now and again to check on live prices. 

Who are they(B****** ** ***t)? 

...

What's wrong with Chards?

🙂

Edited June 29, 2021 by LawrenceChard
clarification

[Bimetallic]

36 minutes ago, Rll1288 said:

Therefore World Spot price is just a consolidation of all the feeds to simplify things...

What do you mean? Where is this "World Spot Price"? Which feeds does it consolidate? What does "consolidate" mean here, mathematically? Simple average? That wouldn't be smart.

I'm pretty sure there is no such thing as "World Spot Price", anywhere. If it existed, it would have to be defined somewhere, and there would have to be feeds for it, but I don't think it exists.

[Rll1288]

21 minutes ago, Bimetallic said:

What do you mean? Where is this "World Spot Price"? Which feeds does it consolidate? What does "consolidate" mean here, mathematically? Simple average? That wouldn't be smart.

I'm pretty sure there is no such thing as "World Spot Price", anywhere. If it existed, it would have to be defined somewhere, and there would have to be feeds for it, but I don't think it exists.

Ok data feeds from the exchanges and the major suppliers like Reuters and Bloomberg's will take that feed and sell on to the institutions... Take FX the rate is based on various sources, Banks directly feed prices directly into Reuters, brokers quotes etc. and is not exchange traded. PM's like all commodities are exchange traded and on multiple platforms (yes I know there can be OTC trades as well) i.e. LME, NYMEX etc. and traders normally trade on those exchanges some on multiple ones (as said to do arbitrage) Reuters and the like take feeds from all exchanges and show as individual pricing for each but also will show the bid and offer probably from multiple sources i.e. best pricing. Now you can't trade on them ( that means you can't hit the bid and sell silver as you would need to go through the exchange, broker etc. However, for many bullion dealers they take this feed and then add margins onto it and is why you see X% above spot price. In other words it is just a marker to base their sales and purchases on and why when selling back PM's you will very rarely get better than the spot price (bid spot price). World Price is basically a term that is used to categorise a price that is based on multiple exchanges, timezones etc.

[LawrenceChard]

7 hours ago, Bimetallic said:

Does anyone know what spot price Bullion By Post uses? i.e. where they get their spot price?

An underexposed and annoying issue with "the" spot price is that no one seems to know what price they're talking about, or where it's coming from. There is no such thing as the spot price for gold or silver, as in a worldwide spot price independent of any specific market or exchange. The only spot prices that actually exist come from specific exchanges like COMEX, Shanghai, etc. I have no idea what is normally used by British dealers. There might be an exchange in London – I'm not sure. (I mean for up-to-the-second spot price, not things like the LBMA gold fix that happens twice each weekday.)

I posted about this last year, asking where people were getting their spot price, meaning which market or exchange. As I recall, no one knew. Even the owner of this forum didn't know where his spot price was coming from, the one displayed at the top of the site – he said it was the World Spot Price, but that doesn't exist.

The spot price feeds on different dealer websites differ significantly, and I've never figured out why that is. There was a 42 cent difference at one point between APMEX and SilverPrice.org, and that was when silver was under $15.00 per ounce, so it was a huge disparity.

Does anyone know what spot price Bullion By Post uses? i.e. where they get their spot price?

You could look on their website to see if it discloses their source, or you could ask them. They will probably say it is commercially sensitive information.

An underexposed and annoying issue with "the" spot price is that no one seems to know what price they're talking about, or where it's coming from.

There are lots of people in this world who don't know what they are talking about, but it doesn't stop them. In fact, the less they know the more they talk!

There is no such thing as the spot price for gold or silver, as in a worldwide spot price independent of any specific market or exchange. The only spot prices that actually exist come from specific exchanges like COMEX, Shanghai, etc. I have no idea what is normally used by British dealers. There might be an exchange in London – I'm not sure. (I mean for up-to-the-second spot price, not things like the LBMA gold fix that happens twice each weekday.)

Spot price can mean at least 3 different things. It is a shorthand way of saying the current or live price on the "spot" market. "Spot market" itself can mean more than one thing. Its general meaning is the market for immediate (often 48 hours) settlement. In futures markets, it usually means the price of the current or nearest settlement month.

I posted about this last year, asking where people were getting their spot price, meaning which market or exchange. As I recall, no one knew.

Nobody asked me. 🙂

We get our price feed from FastMarkets (they used to be called BullionDesk). It is a paid feed, and the fee depends on usage, number of metals, currencies, shares, etc., supplied, and whether you want them all "live". You could try asking them their sources, but may not get an answer unless you are waving a high value potential contract at them, and even then, probably not.

Even the owner of this forum didn't know where his spot price was coming from, the one displayed at the top of the site – he said it was the World Spot Price, but that doesn't exist.

The spot price feeds on different dealer websites differ significantly, and I've never figured out why that is.

There will be latency in any system. Most dealers will be using a service like we use from any of a number of suppliers. These might include Reuters, Bloomberg, and others. It may depend on whether their data is continually "pushed" from their feed supplier, or whether they poll it, and how frequently. Then it depends on how frequently they refresh their own feed output. The more frequently, the more bandwidth they will use on their server, and their internet connection. Real time being the most bandwidth intensive.

More than 20 years ago, I looked at getting a Reuters monitor feed. It was expensive. I cannot remember the exact figures, but it went something like this. £6,000 per annum for one monitor, plus installation or set-up charges. Extra charges for almost every price feed requested. The cost of an ISDN line installation and rental, plus usage (call) charges. These could have been hundreds or thousands of pounds per month. None of this included a licence to publish or share the supply. I guess something basic might have worked out at about £20,000 per annum. This was all in "old" money, probably worth two or three times in current money. Modern day prices have dropped, and you could probably get a basic feed for a few thousand pounds per annum. Our supplier used to do a "free" feed, but it had to carry their branding, and we did use this many years ago. It was supplied as images, to ensure that free users could not easily share it live.

@ChrisSilver probably does know his feed supplier, but is perfectly reasonable to withhold the information.

There was a 42 cent difference at one point between APMEX and SilverPrice.org, and that was when silver was under $15.00 per ounce, so it was a huge disparity.

Now you know why!

There is a lot more I could add, but remember what I said in my fourth line?

Edited June 29, 2021 by LawrenceChard
typos

[Rll1288]

6 minutes ago, LawrenceChard said:

Does anyone know what spot price Bullion By Post uses? i.e. where they get their spot price?

You could look on thier website to see if it discloses their source, or you could ask them. They will probably say it is commercially sensitive information.

An underexposed and annoying issue with "the" spot price is that no one seems to know what price they're talking about, or where it's coming from.

There are lots of people in this world who don't know what they are talking about, but it doesn't stop them. In fact, the less they know the more they talk!

There is no such thing as the spot price for gold or silver, as in a worldwide spot price independent of any specific market or exchange. The only spot prices that actually exist come from specific exchanges like COMEX, Shanghai, etc. I have no idea what is normally used by British dealers. There might be an exchange in London – I'm not sure. (I mean for up-to-the-second spot price, not things like the LBMA gold fix that happens twice each weekday.)

Spot price can mean at least 3 different things. It is a shorthand way of saying the current or live price on the "spot" market. "Spot market" itself can mean more than one thing. Its general meaning is the market for immediate (often 48 hours) settlement. In futures markets, it usually means the price of the curent or nearest settlement month.

I posted about this last year, asking where people were getting their spot price, meaning which market or exchange. As I recall, no one knew.

Nobody asked me. 🙂

We get our price feed from FastMarkets (they used to be called BullionDesk). It is a paid feed, and the fee depends on usage, number of metals, currencies, shares, etc., supplied, and whether you want them all "live". You could try asking them their sources, but may not get an answer unless you are waving a high value potential contract at them, and even then, probably not.

Even the owner of this forum didn't know where his spot price was coming from, the one displayed at the top of the site – he said it was the World Spot Price, but that doesn't exist.

The spot price feeds on different dealer websites differ significantly, and I've never figured out why that is.

There will be latency in any system. Most dealers will be using a service like we use from any of a number of suppliers. These might include Reuters, Bloomberg, and others. It may depend on whether their data is continually "pushed" from their feed supplier, or whether they poll it, and how frequently. Then it depends on how frequently they refresh their own feed output. The more frequently, the more bandwidth they will ues on their server, and their internet connection. Real time being the most bandwidth intensive.

More than 20 years ago, I looked at getting a Reuters monitor feed. It was expensive. A cannot remember the exact figures, but it went something like this. £6,000 per annum for one monitor, plus installation or set-up charges. Extra charges for almost every price feed requested. The cost of an ISDN line installation and rental, plus usage (call) charges. These could have been hundreds or thousands of pounds per month. None of this included a licence to publish or share the supply. I guess something basic might have worked out at about £20,000 per annum. This was all in "old" money, probably worth two or three times in current money. Modern day prices have dropped, and you could probably get a basic feed for a few thousand pounds per annum. Our supplier used to do a "free" feed, but had to carry their branding, and we did use this many years ago. It was supplied as images, to ensure that free users could not easily share it live.

@ChrisSilver probably does know his feed supplier, but is perfectly reasonable to withhold the information.

There was a 42 cent difference at one point between APMEX and SilverPrice.org, and that was when silver was under $15.00 per ounce, so it was a huge disparity.

Now you know why!

There is a lot more I could add, but remember what I said in my fourth line?

Yep.. Spot is just a term used to state the settlement of a particular good/commodity/instrument.... @LawrenceChard how can you not know of the LME ... it's the biggest metals market in the world hahahaha ... as used to be opposite the old Mint... "fastmarkets" supply pricing feeds and as you said you pay for that feed... free pricing is normally delayed and therefore as you mentioned you can pay for a direct feed but the cost is quite high.... I used to build and sell market data systems and created a few that accessed many exchanges and allowed arbitrage between them 🙂

[Spark268]

so in order to summarise: outside of the regulated LBMA fixes, there is no consensus on where the gold prices comes from, or what it is?  

there may only be one LBMA price for the AM and PM prices, but multiple different sources may display different prices. Not only are the names of the sources propriety but the methodology by which those prices are derived are not known.

Edited June 29, 2021 by Spark268

[Rll1288]

Lmba fixes are different from day to day movements…. Each day the fix is used for end of day revaluations etc. But what effects the day to day pricing is the volumes of sales versus buys… basically the price comes from where the pressures are… I.e. if someone came in and bought 1000 contracts it would move the offer price and vice versus… so when you say no idea where the price comes from it’s based on the orders in the market… each trade on the exchange effects pricing and then this is displayed as bid/offers out to the wider audience and to answer your first question why is there a difference on bullion sites is due to if they pay for real time pricing or delayed…. All pricing is based on supply and demand….. the more sellers you have the price will lower and vice versus…the real prices are those which are on the exchange…. At the market level… bullion dealers use a view of that to base their pricing on… I.e. they will always have a wider spread and I believe will hedge there sales/purchase against where they buy their stock from…. The best trade is if someone sells them 100oz and someone else buys 100oz.. they get the spread 😂😂

[LawrenceChard]

4 hours ago, Rll1288 said:

Yep.. Spot is just a term used to state the settlement of a particular good/commodity/instrument.... @LawrenceChard how can you not know of the LME ... it's the biggest metals market in the world hahahaha ... as used to be opposite the old Mint... "fastmarkets" supply pricing feeds and as you said you pay for that feed... free pricing is normally delayed and therefore as you mentioned you can pay for a direct feed but the cost is quite high.... I used to build and sell market data systems and created a few that accessed many exchanges and allowed arbitrage between them 🙂

What make you think I do "not know of the LME"?

I certainly did not say so, although I did not mention them, which does not mean I have never heard of them.

I suspect I know more about the LME than you do, although I do not claim my knowledge of LME to be universal.

Certainly LME are not the bigget or most important exchange for gold or other precious metals, and I was going to state that, but I like to double check my facts.

Looking at the LME website, I find:

"LME Gold*    1,780.00
LME Silver*    26.115"

but as these are asterisked, I read on..

"*Gold and silver spot prices, per troy ounce, established basis LME select trading: 18.29-18.30", and I would be the first to admit I do not understand that, so I clicked through to LME Gold:

"LME GOLD
LME Gold combines daily prompts (including spot) out to 25 days with monthly and quarterly dates along a tradeable five-year forward curve. In this way, the system seamlessly blends the daily structure of the London over-the-counter (OTC) market, and the monthly futures approach of existing exchange offerings.

The contract can be traded electronically from 01.00 to 20.00 (London time) via LMEselect, and through the 24-hour inter-office telephone market.

Market participants can access LME Gold prices for free using LMElive."

Looking further down the page:

"LME GOLD VOLUMES AND MARKET OPEN INTEREST
TRADING DATE    VOLUME1    OPEN INTEREST2 
25 Jun     0       - 
24 Jun     0    417 
23 Jun     0    417 
22 Jun     0    417 
21 Jun     0    417 
18 Jun     0    417 
17 Jun     0    417 
16 Jun     0    417 
15 Jun     0    579 
14 Jun     0    579 
11 Jun     0    579 
10 Jun     0    579 
09 Jun     0    579 
08 Jun     0    579 
07 Jun     0    579 
04 Jun     0    579 
03 Jun     0    579 
02 Jun     0    579 
01 Jun     0    579 
1 Volumes are quoted in lots and published T+2 days in arrears"

So, it appears that the total LME trading volume for 25 days in June was 0.

This confirms what I have long known or believed, that LME is not a major or important exchange or market for gold, although it may be more important for silver.

Wikipedia says:

"Precious metals
Contrary to popular belief, the precious metals, gold and silver, are not traded on the London Metal Exchange, but on the over-the-counter market usually referred to as the London Bullion Market, by the members of the London Bullion Market Association. Platinum and palladium are traded on the London Platinum and Palladium Market. Both members of the LBMA and LPPM trade the precious metals spot market on EBS (Electronic Broking Systems)—acquired by ICAP in June 2006. Many companies involved in minor metals are members of the Minor Metal Trade Association.

The LME used, however, to provide trade matching and clearing services to the London bullion market and distributes gold, silver, and gold IRS (interest rate swaps) forward rates on behalf of the LBMA."

The above may help to explain why I failed to mention the LME.

🙂

I 

 

Edited June 29, 2021 by LawrenceChard
typo

[LawrenceChard]

2 hours ago, Rll1288 said:

Ok so all the prices you see that state spot price are sourced from the exchanges.... Ok the biggest market for metals is the London Metals Exchange... then you have the various exchanges throughout the world.. Metals (like all commodities) can be traded on various exchanges.  Remember the Baring Brothers fandango where the guy was trading the difference between Asian exchanges (arbitrage) 🙂

Now I am not a PM expert as I only used to trade FX. Spot pricing can mean different things but in the FX market it meant value 2 days forward (working days usually) and the prices that you can google are not live prices, they are delayed by around 15 minutes as the main data suppliers like Reuters, Bloomberg charge for feeds into the trading arms of various institutions so will not supply actual rate in real time. If you look at Kitco they show trading in PM's across The New York exchange and another for other markets i.e. London, Asia etc.. and again is probably sourced from the big data suppliers and shown consolidated and really only shows when each market is open and not any differences. The dealers within Banks would have direct feeds and across all open exchanges and I am petty sure they will be different to that shown as they will not be delayed (one of my biggest costs were data for trading floors) 🙂

Therefore World Spot price is just a consolidation of all the feeds to simplify things and as with FX pricing is very liquid and can move many times per second dependent on bids/offers and orders on either side of the price gap. The difference between the bid and offer is called the spread and again is determined by market forces and size of orders and again am sure that real time pricing the spread will be closer then shown. My interpretation of why pricing can be different from site to site is basically on how and where they source from due to the delayed feeds as well as some may update as and when a change occurs where others may just take a price on a minute by minute basis or more (if you get  my drift) some may even source from other secondary websites and thus delays could occur. I take feeds into a Spreadsheet and sometimes it doesn't refresh and you may see some delays in updates etc.

I hope that helps... 

Your mention of the "London Metals (sic) Exchange" is a red herring, as the LME are not a major trading exchange for precious metals, they specialise in base metals, with some ferrous metals.

The main UK market for gold is the London Bullion Market. Many, if not most, trades are made directly between members of the LBMA. This is often known as OTC (Over-The-Counter).

"Over-The-Counter or off-exchange trading is done directly between two parties, without the supervision of an exchange. It is contrasted with exchange trading, which occurs via exchanges."

Other exchanges and markets do exist, including COMEX.

[Martlet]

As @LawrenceChard highlighted, getting a live price feed from a market is expensive, and comes with restrictions.  It seems likely the API service feeds websites use are second or third hand, the primary and derivatives markets being aggregated along the way.  Tradingview for example only has various CFD market information on free service, for metals, commodities and many other instruments. 

[Bimetallic]

24 minutes ago, Rll1288 said:

so when you say no idea where the price comes from it’s based on the orders in the market…

You're missing the point. The question is which market. Everyone knows it's based on orders. The issue is that no one knows where these spot price quotes are coming from. When I say "where", I mean which exchange or market. It has a name. It always has a name.

Your statements about banks, Reuters, etc. are obfuscating the issue – banks don't generate the spot prices for PM (except for the London fixes). Reuters isn't an exchange. They don't have a spot price. They're just messengers.

If Reuters wanted to offer a silver spot price product, they could, maybe called Reuters Silver or something. But they would probably have to explain what it was, what it was based on, how it was computed. Otherwise they're just reporting specific exchanges like COMEX. I don't think they have their own spot price product, something they compute or transform.

[Bimetallic]

Also, it's important to note that the explanations for why dealer-quoted spot prices don't agree with each other is just speculation. We don't actually know why these dealer tickers don't match. We can't possibly know something like that without investigating it. It's the kind of thing that you just have to go find out what the causes are, and if you don't go find out then you simply won't know.

Especially if the starting proposition is something like: "Different PM dealers are quoting different spot prices at the same second in time." If that's all we know, then that's not anything. There's far too little information in that observation to do anything with. At that level, we don't even know the pattern of disparity. For example, we don't know if dealer-quoted spot prices tend to err on the side of inflated quotes, compared to non-dealer sources like SilverPrice.org / GoldPrice.org, the World Gold Council, raw COMEX feeds, etc.

When I checked, there was in fact a pattern – of inflation or overstating the spot price. Fraud is as good an explanation as anything, certainly as good as the speculation about random differences in latencies and feed providers. Dealers would obviously benefit from overstating the spot price in order to make their premiums seem smaller. I just did a quick check, and I see the same pattern as last year. The dealers are all higher than SilverPrice.org, and APMEX is again leading in overstating the spot price. They're consistently 6 or 7 cents higher than SD Bullion and JM Bullion, and 23 cents higher than SilverPrice.org. Note that APMEX is the most expensive of the major dealers in North America, so they would stand to benefit the most from inflating the spot price. (These should all be the Ask price, not the Bid, though SilverPrice.org is not clear about what they're reporting, other than that it's COMEX.)

[Rll1288]

Sorry ... you are missing the point... as stated Reuters takes the feed from the Exchanges.. does not make the prices... The exchanges and the volumes of trades that go through them determine the price..... LME, NYMEX are the exchanges ... people place orders and sell and buy on them... the pricing information then gets disseminated out to the wider audience.. fixing the price is down, normally at the end of each trading period and is used for valuations etc.

Silver paper contracts are traded on the exchanges as is physical commodities... that is what sets the prices... therefore the prices seen at bullion exchanges is a view on what the exchanges have determined the price is at that moment in time. That is why no movements are seen over the weekends until the Asian market opens 🙂

 

[Rll1288]

1 hour ago, Bimetallic said:

Also, it's important to note that the explanations for why dealer-quoted spot prices don't agree with each other is just speculation. We don't actually know why these dealer tickers don't match. We can't possibly know something like that without investigating it. It's the kind of thing that you just have to go find out what the causes are, and if you don't go find out then you simply won't know.

Especially if the starting proposition is something like: "Different PM dealers are quoting different spot prices at the same second in time." If that's all we know, then that's not anything. There's far too little information in that observation to do anything with. At that level, we don't even know the pattern of disparity. For example, we don't know if dealer-quoted spot prices tend to err on the side of inflated quotes, compared to non-dealer sources like SilverPrice.org / GoldPrice.org, the World Gold Council, raw COMEX feeds, etc.

When I checked, there was in fact a pattern – of inflation or overstating the spot price. Fraud is as good an explanation as anything, certainly as good as the speculation about random differences in latencies and feed providers. Dealers would obviously benefit from overstating the spot price in order to make their premiums seem smaller. I just did a quick check, and I see the same pattern as last year. The dealers are all higher than SilverPrice.org, and APMEX is again leading in overstating the spot price. They're consistently 6 or 7 cents higher than SD Bullion and JM Bullion, and 23 cents higher than SilverPrice.org. Note that APMEX is the most expensive of the major dealers in North America, so they would stand to benefit the most from inflating the spot price. (These should all be the Ask price, not the Bid, though SilverPrice.org is not clear about what they're reporting, other than that it's COMEX.)

Ok so now that's a different point... what margins companies put onto the underlying price can be all number of things...  TSF provide a compare page that shows the best price on certain PM's... how they get to that price maybe by adding more spread to the spot price or a margin on top i.e. %, in most cases I would think its the latter... but as said before where these prices are sort (i.e. paid for real time or delayed etc.) may show some discrepancies .... They also show a price differential when buying in singles or multiples... So you have this... Exchanges will show the movement in PM prices based on orders they fulfil.. dealers use that pricing and, based on that will change their price they sell that item with a margin on top.. Chards shows this really well by stating the  intrinsic value of the PM content and then the % on top of the PM... To be honest if i were trading 100s of oz of PMs then I would use an exchange to get the price but for us mere mortals we all have a perceived vale on what we want to buy things at...yes we would all love to get "spot"  but in the UK we know what we would pay for a 1oz silver Brit and knwo that as spot price has fallen, margins haven't as much

[Bimetallic]

On 29/06/2021 at 15:06, Rll1288 said:

Ok so now that's a different point... what margins companies put onto the underlying price can be all number of things...  TSF provide a compare page that shows the best price on certain PM's... how they get to that price maybe by adding more spread to the spot price or a margin on top i.e. %, in most cases I would think its the latter... but as said before where these prices are sort (i.e. paid for real time or delayed etc.) may show some discrepancies .... They also show a price differential when buying in singles or multiples... So you have this... Exchanges will show the movement in PM prices based on orders they fulfil.. dealers use that pricing and, based on that will change their price they sell that item with a margin on top.. Chards shows this really well by stating the  intrinsic value of the PM content and then the % on top of the PM... To be honest if i were trading 100s of oz of PMs then I would use an exchange to get the price but for us mere mortals we all have a perceived vale on what we want to buy things at...yes we would all love to get "spot"  but in the UK we know what we would pay for a 1oz silver Brit and knwo that as spot price has fallen, margins haven't as much

The point is that we don't actually know why dealer-quoted spot prices are so inconsistent. Or why they're consistently inaccurate in the direction of inflating spot. We would have to investigate in order to know. You're just asserting that they pay for feeds and post those feeds unaltered, but you have no way of knowing that without investigating. Since their spot prices are consistently inflated, your assumption is probably incorrect.

[Bimetallic]

On 29/06/2021 at 13:06, Rll1288 said:

Sorry ... you are missing the point... as stated Reuters takes the feed from the Exchanges.. does not make the prices... The exchanges and the volumes of trades that go through them determine the price..... LME, NYMEX are the exchanges ... people place orders and sell and buy on them... the pricing information then gets disseminated out to the wider audience.. fixing the price is down, normally at the end of each trading period and is used for valuations etc.

Silver paper contracts are traded on the exchanges as is physical commodities... that is what sets the prices... therefore the prices seen at bullion exchanges is a view on what the exchanges have determined the price is at that moment in time. That is why no movements are seen over the weekends until the Asian market opens 🙂

 

The issue is that no one knows which exchange a given spot price is from. It doesn't mean anything to say "the exchanges". That's not anything.

[Rll1288]

2 hours ago, Bimetallic said:

The issue is that no one knows which exchange a given spot price is from. It doesn't mean anything to say "the exchanges". That's not anything.

Again you are missing the point.... the feeds that are used are the prices that reflect trades on all exchanges... when they are open.. NYMEX and LME as some stage with be open together and yo can see differing prices between them as orders they receive maybe be different..... i.e. LME Bid 18.50 Offer 19.00, NYMEX bid 18.40 Offer 18.90 ..... therefore you would show a price something like 18.70 ... This would be indicative of where the price is approximately at the moment against the relative orders in the market, on the relevant exchange.... if you paid yo could see the volumes on each exchange on the bids and offers they are showing (in my example LME 18.50/19.00 which may be 1000oz on the bid and 2000oz on the offer. If the middle is 18.70 then you would use that (or the dealers would if that's what they get in they feeds) to base their pricing on. As said before I am sure that dealers would also take into account what premium they would want to add to sell their goods at. If you are asking why does someone like APMEX add points to the spot price and its higher then you would need to ask them. Also, volume has an impact on pricing. 

If you went to your local Bank and said I wanted to exchange USD200 for GBP the rate you would get would not be the same as that for if you wanted to sell USD2mio against GBP.. The same would be on PM's on the exchanges (any exchange) there would be a minimum contract/order size... so wider spreads would be given for smaller amounts.. I can't speak for APMEX but would probably be sure that if you were to ask to buy 100oz of silver they would give you a better price then 1oz.

Look at it this way... do all car dealers give the same price for a car? so what is the actual cost they paid for it? the manufacturer sells it to them at a certain cost and dependent on the dealer and their margins will give you a price based in that. No one knows what the dealer paid for it, we assume that the price for that model is around a certain level based on looking at a number of dealers offers (if you get my drift). Therefore the moral here is that the spot price seen on any site including TSF is a guide price... usually dealers would say we pay a % below spot for your PM's and a margin on top for selling them to you based on the relative value of spot at that time. You strike a deal based on your own set pricing criteria i.e. its value to me for what I need to do. As a stacker with intentions to buy regularly over years spot price is almost ( and I mean almost) irrelevant as if you bought silver a few years ago at X and spot is either much higher or much lower... all you can do is value it against today and what your needs are today ... I have friends who tell me they are millionaires because their house is valued as such. Until you sell that asset you are nothing. 🙂

[Spark268]

2 hours ago, Rll1288 said:

. the feeds that are used are the prices that reflect trades on all exchanges..

how do you know this?