How does BullionVault decide the prices which it quotes?
Contrary to much popular belief there is no perfect market knowledge. We do not have a privileged position which enables us somehow to know what will happen to the price in the next 5 minutes, far less fix it. So making live prices on the BullionVault order board is something which keeps us permanently nervous. We are made still more nervous by the fact that we make our prices automatically using web robots, which are fast and cost effective, but not very smart. Via our robots we are permanently exposed to the possibility that you know more than they do, which is not hard, and that you are capable of reacting quicker than them, which is. Our bots access a wide variety of sources for gold prices, both on the world wide web and elsewhere. They also watch our own order board. All of these data sources are available to you and other traders too. While the world markets are open we are confident enough to make a reasonably tight spread around our best estimate of the world’s gold price, and
