Gold Ticker Symbols, Explained
Quick answer: Gold has no single ticker. Spot gold trades as the currency pair XAU/USD, and XAU is gold's code in the ISO 4217 currency list. COMEX gold futures carry the code GC, with a 10-ounce micro version, MGC. Shanghai's yuan benchmark is SHAU, and GLD is a share in a gold trust, not an ounce of metal. Each symbol prices a different thing, so their quotes almost never match to the dollar.
Gold spot $3,987.20 per troy ounce · COMEX front month $3,993.60 · as of · spot from gold-api.com, futures from Yahoo Finance
Look at two of them side by side right now. The gold spot market price reads $3,987.20 per troy ounce, while the front COMEX futures contract shows $3,993.60. The gap, $6.40 or +0.16%, is not a glitch in either feed. One is a price for metal settled almost at once; the other is a price agreed today for delivery in a later month, and that later date has a cost attached. The page on how the gold spot price is set walks through that carry in detail.
| Symbol | What it is | Note |
|---|---|---|
XAU/USD | Gold priced in US dollars, quoted like a currency pair | XAU is the ISO 4217 code for gold (numeric 959), as listed by SIX |
GC | COMEX gold futures | 100 troy ounces per contract, Rulebook Chapter 113 |
MGC | COMEX Micro Gold futures | 10 troy ounces, as a broker summary lists it |
1OZ | COMEX 1-Ounce Gold futures | one troy ounce, settled in cash |
GC=F | Yahoo Finance's symbol for a COMEX gold contract | on November 11, 2026 it pointed at the December 2026 contract; this site's charts use it |
GC1! | TradingView's continuous front-month gold contract | "1!" is the nearest expiration, rolling when it expires |
SHAU | Shanghai Gold Exchange gold benchmark | quoted in yuan per gram |
GLD | SPDR Gold Shares, a fund share | priced per share, not per ounce; aims to reflect the gold price less expenses |
The table lists each symbol, what sits behind it, its unit and where it trades. The sections below take them one at a time, in the order a reader usually meets them.
XAU/USD: gold written as a currency
XAU appears in the same ISO 4217 list as the dollar and the yen, under the name "Gold" with the numeric code 959, in the version SIX published in September 2026. SIX is the official maintenance agency for those codes. Writing gold as XAU lets trading systems treat it like any other currency, so XAU/USD simply reads as "dollars per unit of gold".
What is the unit? The list itself does not give a weight for one XAU, and we could not find a primary page that does. The convention comes from the market instead. LBMA's guide to the London market says precious metals are quoted by default in US dollars per troy ounce, and a CFTC investor bulletin says the spot price is quoted in dollars per troy ounce. So when a price page prints XAU/USD next to a figure like $3,987.20, read it as dollars for one ounce.
There is one more detail hiding in the word "spot". In London, metal and currency change hands two business days after the trade, on what LBMA calls the spot date. For the full definition, and what it leaves out, see what the spot price of gold is.
GC, MGC and 1OZ: the COMEX family
GC is the commodity code for COMEX Gold Futures, Chapter 113 of the exchange's rulebook. One contract covers 100 troy ounces. A broker's contract-spec page, MetroTrade's, lists a minimum move of $0.10 per ounce, worth $10.00 per contract, and says the contract is physically delivered. The same page names February, April, June, August, October and December as the active delivery months.
MGC is the micro contract. MetroTrade's page puts it at 10 troy ounces, with each tick worth $1.00 per contract. It exists for traders who want the same price exposure in a tenth of the size.
1OZ is the newest member. COMEX's filing with the CFTC describes it as a one-troy-ounce contract under Chapter 131 that settles in cash rather than metal, with a minimum move of $0.25. It was listed for the trade date of Monday, January 13, 2025.
All three share a price source: trading on the exchange itself. That is why most US news quotes for "gold" point back to COMEX gold, even when the headline says spot.
GC=F and GC1!: how quote sites write futures
A futures contract has a delivery month, so the raw code GC alone is not enough to name one. Quote sites invent shorthand for "whichever month I am showing you", and the two most common forms work differently.
Yahoo Finance writes GC=F. On November 11, 2026, its quote page labelled that symbol "Gold Dec 26", a delayed COMEX quote in dollars, so it pointed at the December 2026 contract; Yahoo's exchange help page lists a 30-minute delay for COMEX. That help page does not explain the "=F" suffix, and no Yahoo page we read says how it chooses which month to show or when it switches. You can see the month in the label, but the rule behind it is not published.
TradingView writes GC1!. Its help page says "1!" means the front, nearest contract month and rolls to the next contract when the front one reaches expiration, while "2!" is the second-nearest month. Its COMEX:GC1! page names the product "Gold Futures" with a contract size of 100 troy ounces.
Both shortcuts stitch separate contracts into one line. When the line jumps from one month to the next, the chart can show a step that no trade ever made. If that sounds familiar from your own screen, the guide on how to read a gold spot chart covers gaps and what causes them.
SHAU: Shanghai's benchmark in yuan per gram
SHAU is the trading code of the Shanghai Gold Exchange's gold benchmark, quoted in yuan per gram with a minimum move of 0.01 yuan, one kilogram per lot and delivery two days after the trade. The metal behind it is one-kilogram ingots at a minimum fineness of 999.9. The benchmark is set in a morning and an afternoon pricing session, each producing its own price.
Because the unit is a gram and the currency is the yuan, SHAU cannot be read against XAU/USD without two conversions: grams to ounces, then yuan to dollars. Once converted, it often sits a little above or below the London and New York numbers. The Shanghai gold price page does that sum with each day's figures.
GLD: a share in a trust, not an ounce
GLD is the ticker of SPDR Gold Shares. The fund says its objective is for the shares to reflect the price of gold bullion less the fund's expenses, calls itself the first US traded gold ETF, and gives an inception date of November 18, 2004. On the day we read the fund's page, its gross expense ratio was listed at 0.40%. The page names World Gold Trust Services as sponsor, The Bank of New York Mellon as trustee, and HSBC Bank and JPMorgan Chase Bank as custodians.
The share price is far below the price of an ounce because one share stands for a fraction of an ounce, not a whole one. We do not print that fraction: the fund pages we could read did not show a gold-per-share figure, and a number worked out by us would not be the fund's. What the stated objective does tell you is direction. A share tracks gold minus the cost of running the trust, so the gold behind each share drifts lower over the years rather than staying fixed.
None of this is a view on the fund. A share and a coin are different things to own, with different costs, risks and paperwork, and this page does not rank them.
Why the same minute shows different numbers
Put four screens next to each other and you will rarely see one price. Spot and the front futures month differ by the cost of waiting, which is the $6.40 you see in the strip above. A delayed feed adds its own lag: a quote that is half an hour old can be several dollars away from one that is live. SHAU is fixed at set times in yuan and then converted, so it reflects an earlier moment and an exchange rate. GLD trades on a stock exchange, so its quote stands still when that exchange is shut, even while futures keep moving.
Retail prices sit on top of all of these. A coin or bar costs more than any of the four, for reasons explained in spot price vs retail price.
Which one this site uses
The headline figure on this site comes from a spot feed for XAU, and the price strip and live tiles use it. The charts use Yahoo's GC=F series, because it gives one consistent daily history from 2000 to today from the same source. That is also why the record we quote is the highest daily high of COMEX gold futures, and why the distance from it, 28.5%, compares futures with futures rather than mixing a futures record with a spot quote. The record itself was $5,586.20 on January 29, 2026.
Each widget is stamped with its source and time, so you can always tell which of the two you are looking at on today's gold spot price page.
Is there a "gold stock ticker"?
People often search for one, but gold itself is not a company and has no share. What turns up under that search are three different things: futures codes like GC, fund shares like GLD, and the stocks of mining companies. A mining share moves with the company's own costs, debts and output as well as with gold, so its chart can part ways with the metal for long stretches. If what you care about is the price of the metal, XAU/USD and GC are the symbols that describe it.
This page can't tell you which of these instruments suits you, whether any of them will rise or fall, or how a quote site will roll its continuous symbol next month. It explains what each code stands for and why the numbers differ; the choice of what, if anything, to hold is yours to make with full information.
Information, not financial advice. This page does not tell you to buy or sell, and it does not forecast prices. Figures are reference values at the time shown.
If you are weighing metal you can hold against a share in a fund, it helps to know who sells the physical side. One option for retirement accounts is described on our Augusta Precious Metals page.
Frequently asked questions
What does XAU stand for?
XAU is the code for gold in the ISO 4217 currency list, maintained by SIX, with the numeric code 959. Trading systems use it so gold can be quoted like a currency. A price shown as XAU/USD means US dollars for one unit of gold, which the market quotes by default per troy ounce.
Why is GLD's price so much lower than the gold price?
A GLD share represents a fraction of an ounce held by the trust, not a full ounce, so its price is a fraction of the ounce price. The fund's objective is to track gold less its expenses, which means the gold behind each share slowly declines. The fund's own pages are the place to check its current figures.
Is GC=F the spot price of gold?
No. On Yahoo Finance, GC=F is a delayed quote for a COMEX futures contract; in November 2026 it pointed at the December 2026 contract. Futures prices normally sit a few dollars away from spot because they settle later. Yahoo does not publish the rule it uses to switch from one contract month to the next.
Sources
Every page a fact on this page came from, marked as the publisher's own page or a page that reports it, with the date we read it.
- six-group.com (six-group.com; the publisher's own page; read 2026-11-11)
- cftc.gov (cftc.gov; the publisher's own page; read 2026-11-11)
- help.metrotrade.com (help.metrotrade.com; a page reporting it; read 2026-11-11)
- en.sge.com.cn (en.sge.com.cn; the publisher's own page; read 2026-11-11)
- ssga.com (ssga.com; the publisher's own page; read 2026-11-11)
- six-group.com (six-group.com; the publisher's own page; read 2026-11-11)
- lbma.org.uk (lbma.org.uk; the publisher's own page; read 2026-11-11)
- cftc.gov (cftc.gov; the publisher's own page; read 2026-11-11)
- help.metrotrade.com (help.metrotrade.com; a page reporting it; read 2026-11-11)
- cftc.gov (cftc.gov; the publisher's own page; read 2026-11-11)
- finance.yahoo.com (finance.yahoo.com; the publisher's own page; read 2026-11-11)
- help.yahoo.com (help.yahoo.com; the publisher's own page; read 2026-11-11)
- tradingview.com (tradingview.com; the publisher's own page; read 2026-11-11)
- tradingview.com (tradingview.com; the publisher's own page; read 2026-11-11)
- en.sge.com.cn (en.sge.com.cn; the publisher's own page; read 2026-11-11)