From Four Small Exchanges to One Giant Screen
COMEX began in 1933 as a merger of four small New York commodity exchanges, folded into NYMEX in 1994, and became part of CME Group in 2008. Its physical trading floor in lower Manhattan has gone largely quiet over the years as trading migrated to CME's Globex electronic platform — a handful of options pits are about all that remain of the shouting.
Nearly a Full Day, Five Days a Week
Where the LME's Ring runs a tidy five-hour window, COMEX trades almost continuously from Sunday evening through Friday afternoon (US time), pausing only for a short daily maintenance break. That design borrows from modern financial futures markets built for a global trading audience, not a single regional physical floor.
The Paper Price Behind the Spot Price
COMEX gold and silver futures, alongside LBMA's over-the-counter prices, are the two reference points most of the world's "spot" quotes are ultimately built from. Refiners, jewellers, and even LBMA's own benchmark auctions keep one eye on the COMEX screen in real time.
When New York and London Stopped Agreeing
In April 2020, COVID-era refinery shutdowns in Switzerland — which casts most of the world's large 400oz bars — disrupted the usual flow of metal into COMEX-deliverable 100oz and kilo bars. COMEX futures traded at an unusually wide, widely-reported premium over London spot for weeks, a rare visible crack in an otherwise tightly linked global gold price.
On a heavy trading day, more paper gold changes hands on COMEX in a single afternoon than exists in physical form in most countries' entire national reserves.
