spot gold trades on lbma, london bullion market association and like fx, is virtually a 24 hr market. accessbility is via EBS or other interbank, otc platforms on reuters and bloomberg
the reason for the recent backwardation could be for many reasons. in london, hsbc and jpm have the biggest gold vaults and demand for gold bars are through the roof so the EFP (exchange for physical aka the spot to futures basis) goes negative. the problem is that public data on lbma deliveries, to my knowlege, is not publicly available. in laymans terms, a bank borrows a shit load of lbma gold in the market to make good on delivery, so the otc curve tightens up while futures curve stays the same.
the negative interest rate policy in the front end of the swiss and euro yield curve has helped to fuel gold demand above and beyond geopolitics, so you also have to look at the xaueur cross...
