Gold as Commodity?

[GWB]

Here's the recent thread about gold on lists.gnucash.org:

http://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-user/2017-January/068415.html

XAU is indeed the currency symbol for Gold in foreign exchange (FOREX)
trading, and is often used as a currency pair with the US dollar:
XAU/USD.  However, if you are not tracking the currency fluctuations
for a Forex contract, then you might consider getting the dollar/gold
rate from one of the bullion dealers' websites once a week, month, or
quarter.  If gnucash handles XAU internally as a currency that values
against others (AUD, USD, CAD) that might be best, but I have not had
a chance to test that out.

If you dislike knowing how excessively volatility currencies can be,
you may not want to follow the FOREX values.  The volatility won't
affect you if you hold it more than a day or a week, but it can be a
valuable signal (along with the VIX, or "Fear Index").  My guess (and
it's just that, a guess) is that GoldMoney.com is going to determine
(from whatever combination of markets and "spot prices" they use) what
a gram of gold is worth in any other currency, and that's what you
will get for a price no matter what.  So perhaps just use their
valuation, which they conveniently give you on their website:

https://www.goldmoney.com/live-prices

I would be curious how your experience with them goes.  The currency
pairs with precious metals have been largely removed from Forex
exchanges in the US due to the ass-clownery of legislation such as
Dodd-Frank and FACTA.  So goldmoney.com might be an alternative.

Gordon

On Tue, Jan 24, 2017 at 8:56 AM, John Ralls <jralls at ceridwen.us> wrote:
>
>> On Jan 23, 2017, at 8:26 PM, Plutocrat <plutocrat at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> John Ralls wrote on Tuesday, 24 January, 2017 12:09 PM:
>>> Might work for the OP, won't work for GnuCash. Only ISO-4217 currencies can be currencies in GnuCash, everything else is a commodity.
>>
>> Not trying to contradict you here, but according to Wikipedia, ISO 4217 does include gold (XAU)?
>>
>>       https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_4217
>>
>> Bitcoin (XBT) hasn't been approved yet, but is under consideration.
>
> Sorry, you're right. XAU is a legit currency and it's included in GnuCash's iso-4217-currencies.xml, so it will indeed work in GnuCash.
>
> Regards,
> John Ralls
>
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