XAU/USD and XAG/USD are the ticker conventions for gold and silver spot prices in US dollars. XAU is one troy ounce of gold, XAG is one troy ounce of silver, and the "X" prefix marks them as commodities under the ISO 4217 currency standard rather than national currencies. So an XAG/USD quote of 38.50 means one troy ounce of silver costs $38.50 at that moment, and it is read exactly like a currency pair.
Watching the two together is more informative than watching either alone. Gold and silver share the same monetary drivers — real interest rates, the dollar, central-bank demand — but silver carries a large industrial demand component that gold does not. When both move in the same direction by similar percentages, the driver is usually monetary. When silver moves much harder than gold, the driver is usually silver-specific: industrial demand, a supply headline, or speculative flow into a much smaller market.
What "spot" actually means
The spot price is the price for immediate delivery of metal in the wholesale market — in practice, unallocated metal in London, settled two business days out. It is not a single exchange print. It is a continuously updated consensus drawn from OTC dealer quotes and the nearby futures contract, which is why two data providers can show quotes a few cents apart at the same instant.
Spot is a wholesale number for large bars. It is not the price you will pay for a one-ounce coin: retail purchases carry a premium over spot that covers fabrication, distribution, and dealer margin, and that premium is proportionally much larger for silver than for gold. How silver is priced traces the full chain from the LBMA Silver Price and COMEX futures through to the number on a dealer's website.
Troy ounces, grams, and kilos
Precious metals are quoted in troy ounces, not the avoirdupois ounces used for groceries. One troy ounce is 31.1035 grams, about 10% heavier than a standard ounce. Two conversions cover almost everything:
- Per gram — divide the XAG/USD or XAU/USD quote by 31.1035.
- Per kilogram — multiply the quote by 32.1507.
A COMEX silver futures contract is 5,000 troy ounces; a good delivery silver bar is nominally 1,000 ounces. A COMEX gold contract is 100 troy ounces. Those sizes explain why a one-dollar move in silver and a one-dollar move in gold are not remotely comparable events.
Trading hours
Gold and silver spot trade nearly around the clock, from roughly 22:00 UTC on Sunday to 21:00 UTC on Friday, with a short daily pause around 21:00–22:00 UTC as liquidity rolls between the New York close and the Asian open. Liquidity is deepest during the London morning and the London–New York overlap, which is when most of the day's range is typically set. Outside those windows, spreads widen and single orders can move the quote more than the news would justify.
Reading the ratio
The gold/silver ratio chart above shows how many ounces of silver it takes to buy one ounce of gold. A rising ratio means gold is outperforming; a falling ratio means silver is. Historically the ratio has spent most of its modern life between about 45 and 90, with sharp spikes above 100 during crises when investors crowd into gold first. The full gold/silver ratio guide covers how the ratio is used for rebalancing and ratio swaps.
More live charts
The main charts page carries silver spot alongside the SLV and GLD ETFs, silver quoted in major currencies, and a related-markets overview. For a full-screen, drawing-enabled chart, see the TradingView silver chart.
Charts and market data on this page are provided by TradingView. Nothing here is investment or trading advice — see our full Disclaimer.
Related reading
- How silver is priced — spot, LBMA, COMEX, and retail premiums
- Understanding the gold/silver ratio
- Silver vs. gold for new investors
- How to read a silver chart
Last reviewed on August 27, 2026.