Markets · Metals & Energy
Hard assets.Liquid execution.
Gold has been the market's fear gauge for three thousand years; oil prices the world's work. Both trade at IEXS as spot CFDs — the physical world's most-watched assets, with the immediacy, leverage and shortability of FX, and none of the warehouse.
XAU · XAG · Brent · WTI · Commodity indices
Why Trade the Physical World
When paper wobbles,metal speaks.
Metals and energy answer to a different master than equities — real rates, central-bank reserves, OPEC supply discipline and the physics of extraction. That independence is exactly why they belong in a trading book: when correlations converge in a risk-off, gold is often the only line moving the other way.
The CFD wrapper removes everything that makes physical commodities awkward — storage, insurance, delivery windows, futures expiry management — and leaves only the price. Long or short, 0.01 lots or 100.
3000y
Gold as the market fear gauge
4
Gold, silver, Brent & WTI
0.01–100
Lot range, long or short
0
Storage, delivery or expiry to manage
NY3·LD4
Same execution stack as FX
Contract Specifications
Metals and energy,at a glance.
| Instrument | Symbol | Spread From* | Trading Hours (GMT+2) | Contract Size | Max. Leverage | Volume Range |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gold | XAUUSD | 2.9 | Mon–Fri 01:01–24:00 | 100 OZ | 1000 | 0.01 – 100 |
| Silver | XAGUSD | 2.4 | Mon–Fri 01:01–24:00 | 5,000 OZ | 100 | 0.01 – 100 |
| Brent Crude | UKOUSD | 4.0 | Mon–Thu 01:01–24:00 · Fri 03:01–23:59 | 1,000 Barrels | 100 | 0.01 – 100 |
| WTI Crude | USOUSD | 4.0 | Mon–Fri 01:01–24:00 | 1,000 Barrels | 100 | 0.01 – 100 |
* Data reproduced from the IEXS product specification schedule; indicative under normal market conditions. Live values inside the trading platform are binding.
What Moves These Markets
Know the driversbefore the trade.
01
Gold — Real Rates & Fear
Gold pays no coupon, so it competes with bonds: when real yields fall, gold's opportunity cost falls with them and the metal bids. Layer on central-bank buying and crisis hedging, and you have the two forces behind most XAU trends.
02
Silver — Metal with a Day Job
Half monetary asset, half industrial input. Silver inherits gold's macro drivers and adds manufacturing demand — which is why it runs harder than gold in both directions. Respect the volatility premium.
03
Crude — Supply Discipline
OPEC+ quotas, US shale response times, inventories and the weekly EIA report set the rhythm; geopolitics sets the shocks. Brent prices seaborne barrels, WTI prices the US pipeline hub — the spread between them is itself a trade.
04
Swap on Commodities
Spot commodity CFDs carry financing that reflects the underlying forward curve. In steep contango or backwardation, holding costs become part of the thesis — check the in-platform swap before positioning for weeks rather than hours.
23h
Approx. weekday trading window
2
Daily London gold fixes
Wed
US EIA crude inventories
3×
Pre-weekend swap day
Session Notes
Almost 24 hours.Mind the break.
Metals and energy trade nearly around the clock on weekdays, with a short daily maintenance break where spreads widen and liquidity thins. The London AM/PM fixes and the New York pit hours still concentrate gold's volume; oil clusters around US inventory data. Weekend gaps apply to both.
FAQ
Metals & energy,asked and answered.
Is XAUUSD the same as buying gold?
Economically similar, practically different. You hold price exposure with margin efficiency and instant liquidity, but no bar, no vault and no ownership. For trading, that is the point; for burying treasure, buy coins.
Why Brent and WTI both?
They price different physical realities — seaborne versus US midcontinent crude. Global macro traders tend to Brent; US inventory traders to WTI; relative-value traders to the spread between them.
What leverage applies to gold?
Margin tiers for metals are set per contract and shown inside the platform; they differ from FX tiers because volatility regimes differ. Check XAUUSD's current requirement in MT4/MT5 before sizing.
Can oil really go negative?
April 2020 proved the futures can. Spot CFD pricing follows the underlying market; extreme dislocations are exactly when negative balance protection earns its place in the account terms.