Gold Futures Explained: COMEX Contract Specs, Delivery, Contango, and the Spot Price

A gold futures contract is an agreement to buy or sell a set quantity of gold, of a set purity, for delivery in a set month, at a price agreed today. The benchmark is COMEX Gold futures (GC), part of CME Group, which covers 100 troy ounces and is physically delivered from exchange-approved vaults.

In short: COMEX GC is 100 troy ounces, quoted in dollars and cents per ounce, with a minimum tick of $0.10 per ounce, worth $10 per contract. Delivered gold must be at least 995 fineness, from an exchange-approved brand, in one 100-ounce bar or three 1-kilo bars. CME also lists Micro Gold (MGC, 10 ounces, $1 per tick) and 1-Ounce Gold (1OZ, financially settled, $0.25 per tick). Gold futures usually trade above spot because of financing costs, a mild contango that shrinks toward zero at expiry.

The contracts

Specifications from the COMEX rulebook (Chapter 113 for GC) and CME fact cards, as of November 2026.

Contract	Code	Size	Tick	Tick value	Settlement
Gold	GC	100 troy oz	$0.10/oz	$10.00	Physical
Micro Gold	MGC	10 troy oz	$0.10/oz	$1.00	See CME specs
1-Ounce Gold	1OZ	1 troy oz	$0.25/oz	$0.25	Financial, to the GC daily settlement price

GC details worth knowing:

Purity and form: minimum 995 fineness, a brand on the exchange’s approved list, delivered as one 100-ounce bar or three 1-kilogram bars. A weight tolerance of 5% above or below applies. Bars weighed in grams are converted at 31.1035 grams per troy ounce.
Months: gold lists the nearby calendar months plus the active cycle of February, April, June, August, October and December, with June and December contracts listed several years forward.
Last trading day: the third last business day of the contract month.
Hours: CME Globex, Sunday to Friday, with a daily 60-minute break (5:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. CT), as of November 2026.

1-Ounce Gold launched on January 13, 2025, aimed at smaller traders. It is one hundredth the size of GC and one tenth the size of Micro Gold, and it settles in cash to the GC daily settlement price rather than delivering metal. As of November 2026, CME’s FAQ describes it as available for trading 24/7 on Globex, subject to scheduled maintenance windows. Check CME’s specs page for current hours.

How delivery works

GC delivery is not someone driving a truck of bars to your house. Delivery happens through warrants, electronic receipts for specific bars held in exchange-licensed depositories, mostly in the New York area. During the delivery period, a short who has not closed out issues a notice of intent to deliver, the clearing house assigns it to a long, and the long pays the invoice amount and receives the warrant. The gold stays in the vault unless the new owner arranges to take it out, which involves fees and logistics.

Most participants never get near this. Speculators and many hedgers close or roll before first notice day, and retail brokers generally require it. The full sequence of first notice day, delivery notices and last trading day is in physical vs cash settlement.

Futures vs spot: why futures usually sit higher

“Spot gold” usually means gold for immediate settlement in the London over-the-counter market, where the LBMA Gold Price is set twice a day. The COMEX futures price for a later month normally sits above spot. The reason is the cost of carry.

Someone who wants gold in three months can either:

buy gold today, pay for storage and insurance, and forgo the interest on the cash, or
buy a futures contract today and keep the cash earning interest until delivery.

For those to cost about the same, the futures price should roughly equal:

Futures = Spot x (1 + (r minus lease rate) x t / 360)

where r is the interest rate and the lease rate is what gold owners can earn by lending their metal. Lease rates are usually small, so the futures premium tracks interest rates.

Illustrative example: spot gold is $4,000 an ounce, interest rates are 4%, lease rates are near zero, and the contract expires in 60 days.

Carry: $4,000 x 0.04 x 60 / 360 = $26.67.
Fair futures price: about $4,026.67.

As the contract nears expiry, t falls and the premium shrinks. At expiry the futures price converges on the price of deliverable gold. This persistent premium is a mild, steady form of contango, explained in contango and backwardation and, more generally, in how futures prices are set.

When the relationship breaks

The carry relationship assumes gold can move freely between London and New York. In early 2025, fears about possible US tariffs on imported metals led to large flows of gold into COMEX vaults and unusually wide gaps between COMEX futures and London spot. Physical shipping capacity, bar size differences (London trades mainly 400-ounce bars; COMEX delivers 100-ounce and kilo bars) and refining capacity limit how quickly arbitrage can close such gaps. The difference between a futures price and the relevant spot price is called basis: see the basis glossary entry.

Worked example: tick arithmetic

Prices are illustrative, not forecasts.

GC. You buy one February gold contract at $4,000.00. The next day it settles at $4,012.30.

Move: $12.30 per ounce.
Ticks: $12.30 / $0.10 = 123 ticks.
Gain: 123 x $10 = $1,230. (Check: $12.30 x 100 ounces = $1,230.)

MGC. The same move on one Micro Gold contract: 123 ticks x $1 = $123.

1OZ. The same $12.30 move on one 1-Ounce contract is $12.30. Because the 1OZ tick is $0.25, the contract itself only trades at quarter-dollar increments, though it settles to the GC settlement price.

A bad day. Gold has had many days with moves of $50 to $100 an ounce or more. A $90 fall is $9,000 on one GC contract, $900 on MGC and $90 on 1OZ.

A miner’s hedge. A small mine expects to produce 1,000 ounces over the next six months and wants to lock in a price level for half of it. Five hundred ounces is five GC contracts. It sells five contracts for a month six months out at an illustrative $4,080.00.

If gold falls to $3,900.00 by then: futures gain = $180.00 x 100 ounces x 5 contracts = $90,000, offsetting the lower price it gets for its metal.
If gold rises to $4,250.00: futures loss = $170.00 x 100 x 5 = $85,000, offset by the higher price for its metal, but paid in cash through daily margin calls along the way.

The second case is the one that catches hedgers out. The mine may be fine economically, but it needs enough cash on hand to meet margin calls before it sells the gold. More on hedging mechanics in how hedging with futures works.

Reading the gold curve

Because GC lists contracts years ahead, you can line up the settlement prices month by month. In normal conditions each later contract is a little more expensive than the one before, and the step between months roughly matches the interest cost of carrying gold for those extra months. A trader who holds a long position and rolls it forward every two months pays that step each time: a cost that does not show up in the spot price chart. See rolling futures contracts.

Why people trade gold futures

Hedging by miners and refiners. A mine can sell futures to lock in a price for future production; a jeweller can buy futures to fix the cost of metal it will need.
Exposure without storage. Funds and traders get price exposure without handling bars.
Price discovery. COMEX futures trade nearly around the clock and are a key reference price for gold.

What moves gold futures

Real interest rates. Gold pays no interest, so higher inflation-adjusted yields raise the cost of holding it.
The US dollar. Gold is priced in dollars; a stronger dollar tends to weigh on the dollar price.
Central bank buying. Official sector purchases have been a significant source of demand in recent years.
Risk events. Geopolitical stress and financial turmoil often lift demand for gold.
Physical logistics. As 2025 showed, shipping and tariff concerns can create unusual gaps between markets.

What can go wrong

Leverage. The margin on a GC contract is a small fraction of the roughly $400,000 notional value at an illustrative $4,000 price. A 5% move is about $20,000 per contract.
Delivery. Holding a GC long past first notice day can lead to delivery and a full invoice. Holding a short past it can require delivering metal you do not have.
Margin increases. CME raises margins when gold volatility rises. Current requirements as of November 2026 are on CME’s margins page; any figure quoted here would go stale.
Gaps and fast markets. Gold trades almost around the clock, but liquidity varies by hour, and prices can gap on news.
Basis surprises. A hedge using COMEX futures against gold priced elsewhere can diverge, as in early 2025.

The takeaway

COMEX gold futures are 100 ounces of 995-fine gold per contract, with each $0.10 per ounce worth $10. Micro Gold and 1-Ounce Gold scale the same exposure down by 10 and 100 times. Futures usually trade a little above spot because of financing costs, and that premium shrinks to zero at expiry. Delivery happens through vault warrants, and most traders close or roll well before it.