I think it's a very very smart move by Alpari, I'm not sure how popular it would be but unquestionably it's a very attractive offering for some clients who fear that all currencies worldwide may become unstable.
Alpari (UK) has just launched the highly anticipated Gold accounts*. All our Gold account clients will have their account balance, profit/loss and other information measured in gold. Trading on a Gold account is the same as on Alpari (UK) currency accounts.
The base currency of a Gold account is the standardized unit GLD. The pair GLDUSD is defined as 0.001 of the spot price of one ounce of gold against the US dollar (the instrument XAUUSD). Adjacent to the US dollar or euro and reflecting the market price of gold, GLD is an easy-to-calculate unit.
Deposits to a Gold account are converted to GLD at which point traders have access to the full range of options available on standard currency-based accounts: trading currencies, CFDs and precious metals including gold (XAUUSD).
Trading example:
A client wants to trade 1 lot in USDCHF. Assuming a Leverage rate of 1:100, Alpari (UK) will require USD1,000 as margin. In our example the current XAUUSD rate is 1,364.90 which means the GLDUSD rate will be 1.3649 (1,364.90 x 0.001, with the 0.001 being a thousandth of the spot price of one ounce of gold against the US dollar).
USD1,000 margin requirement : 1.36490 = 732.65 GLD units.
*Available to Micro and Classic account holders.
