Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) has begun trading gold futures in London, the Financial Times reported today (Tuesday). The New York Stock Exchange owner launched the contracts alongside futures on silver, platinum and palladium.
The contracts are priced off the daily London auctions that ICE runs to set benchmark prices for the four metals, according to the FT. They cover delivery from a single day up to six months ahead and clear through ICE's London arm, which also clears the Brent crude oil contract.
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London handles nearly $190 billion a day in over-the-counter gold deals and holds about $1.4 trillion of the metal in its vaults, the newspaper said. Yet the city has had no gold futures contract since the London Metal Exchange (LME) shut its own in 2022 because of low volumes.
The metal also carries much of the retail market. Metals made up more than 60% of global CFD broker volumes in the first half of 2025, and gold accounted for close to 80% of that metals business.
A Contract Tied to the Auction Price
ICE took over the London gold price in 2015, when its benchmark unit replaced a bank-run fixing dating back to 1919 with an electronic auction.
Auction participants have grown from four to 20 since then, including Jane Street, DRW, Goldman Sachs and Citi, the FT reported. Average daily auction volume has risen by more than 30% since 2015, to more than 424,000 ounces.
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"Derivatives markets generally are there to support the physical market," Chris Rhodes, president of ICE Futures Europe, told the FT.
New York Holds the Volume
CME Group is the venue ICE has to compete with. Its gold futures in New York averaged roughly $125 billion in daily trading in the first six months of the year, while ICE's own US gold market trails both CME and Shanghai, according to the FT.
CME has also extended trading hours for smaller gold contracts. Its one-ounce gold futures drew about $60 million in notional value during their first weekend of round-the-clock trading in July.
London's earlier attempts did not last. The LME's contract ran for five years, and the London Gold Futures Market failed to gain traction in the mid-1980s. Last year the London Bullion Market Association called for gold futures trading to return to Britain.
ICE's US exchange already lists a 100-ounce Gold Daily Futures contract delivered into London vaults, which auction participants use to move positions into clearing at ICE Clear U.S., according to the exchange 's website.
The London version, set out in a September 17 notice from ICE Futures Europe, keeps the listing and the clearing in the UK.
Prices in the two cities split after US tariff announcements in April 2025. New York futures traded above London physical prices, and traders shipped large quantities of gold to the US.
A futures market operating next to London's vaults could make such dislocations less likely, the FT said.
Central banks have also been moving bullion. De Nederlandsche Bank, the Dutch central bank, transferred more than 78 tonnes of gold from New York to London last month, citing increasing geopolitical unrest.
