Gold Futures Symbol – What makes the ticker, contract or stock symbol?

The Gold Futures Symbol differs from the symbol for the actual commodity. The symbol for gold as a future is GC, however there is an extra letter and number that follow the symbol. This extra letter and number simply explain which month and year the futures will expire. The following letters are used in the trade of futures to represent months: F is used for January, G is used for February, H for March, J for April, K for May, M for June, N for July, Q for August, U for September, V for October, X for November and finally Z is used for December.

For example, the if the letters GCU appear, you are looking at the gold futures for the month of September. The month that the future represents has now been determined, and that is the difficult part, now how to determine the year. The year that the future represents is a much more simple calculation, the number after the the letter representing the month represents the year. For 2011 the number would be 11, for 2012 the number following the month would be 12 and so on. This is a simple rundown of how to locate a gold future for a specific month in the future, or even the past if you wish to do so, with this information you should easily be able to determine which month a gold future price is for when looking at it.

You may have to reference the months because the letters do not necessarily reflect on the month that they represent, however the year should be easy to recognize even for a beginner. In review, the futures symbol for gold is simply a GC followed by the letter representing the month and the number representing the year, for example GCJ12 is the future symbol for gold for the month of April 2012.