What Does Trading Gold Actually Mean?

Never traded before? Start here.

Trading gold doesn't mean buying a gold bar. It means taking a position on where gold's price goes next — long if you think it rises, short if you think it falls. Right, you keep the difference. Wrong, you pay it.

There are 4 ways to get exposure to gold's price: physical gold, ETFs, CFDs and futures. Short-term traders mostly use the last two — and they look identical on a chart. They are not.

Day 1 of "Volume Trading From Zero." Tomorrow: futures vs CFD, the full comparison.