Question about gold futures

[orangelam]

i found some discrepancy between investing.com and the price from CME, as you can see below(red rectangle), the prices are different in 3 Jan 2019.

for reference:
https://www.investing.com/commodities/gold-historical-data
https://www.cmegroup.com/trading/me...settlements_futures.html#tradeDate=01/03/2019

i have some questions below
1) do you know where the price from in investing.com?

2) if the gold futures price quoted in investing.com are from CME, do you know which time point is the last/settlement price quoted? As i know the trading hours in CME gold futures is basically 24hrs (1 hr break from 4pm).
although the futures trade nearly 24 hrs, the price after evening may not be indicative, so i guess the last/settlement price should be right after the afternoon session?

3)can anyone tell me what is the difference and meaning between last price and settlement price?

4)when we talk about oil, we will use london brent oil and US WTI as reference, how about gold? which gold we use?

sorry for my questions, i just want to make it clear because i am new in gold...

many thanks!!

 

[tommcginnis]

Slow down.
Read the sites you've already been given.

"All market data contained within the CME Group website should be considered as a reference only and should not be used as validation against, nor as a complement to, real-time market data feeds. Settlement prices on instruments without open interest or volume are provided for web users only and are not published on Market Data Platform (MDP). These prices are not based on market activity."

 

[bone]

You should also message investing.com and ask them about their source of information.

I am not personally a Gold trader per se; I have spread it with other highly correlated products as part of an inter market spread trade from time to time. I do have a former client who currently trades Gold on the Comex and LME - if he's following me here on ET maybe he can chime in

The settlement price mark from an exchange on the most liquid expiries (usually the front month, notable exception being Eurodollars) should be very accurate. Many of the less liquid expiries are marked at settlement by the exchange using a calculation formula.

What are you using this data for ? Are you modeling ? If you actually intend to do serious work, I would suggest purchasing data directly from the exchange. It's clean and accurate. Well worth the nominal investment.

If you have access to exchange time and sales (Bloomberg is best by far) then I can tell you by experience that most analysts will choose a common time (like, for example, 2:00 pm US Eastern Time) and use that data point in their models.

 

[Visaria]

Gold prices on investing.com are CFD prices which are from a provider (i don't know who) which in turn should mirror CME prices but there may be some discrepancies (as you've found out).

The settlement price of gold on CME is not the same as the last traded price on CME in the day. You'll have to look up how they calculate the settlement price.

 

[MattZ]

Gold prices on investing.com are CFD prices which are from a provider (i don't know who) which in turn should mirror CME prices but there may be some discrepancies (as you've found out) .

Exactly that! They say Futures, But is a CFD Futures, not exchange. Different CFDs may have different liquidity providers that may be substantially different from the exchange.