Gold Contracts different

Hi all, this is the comparison between the different contracts.

------------------Gold Guinea---------Gold Mini-----------Gold HNI----------Gold
Trading unit:---------8 g---------------100 g---------------1 kg------------1 kg
Base Value unit :-----8 g----------------10 g---------------10 g------------10 g
Tick size :-----------1 Rs----------------1 Rs---------------1 Rs------------1 Rs
Purity :--------------995----------------999----------------999-------------995
Value :-----------11,438 Rs-----------14,497 Rs----------14,715 Rs-------14,508 Rs
Margin :----------457.52 Rs------------5,798 Rs----------58,860 Rs-------58,032 Rs

Time for some basics..
1)Trading value is the quantity of gold you need to buy / sell if you want to exercise delivery. (Eg: you own a jewelery shop and want to physically own 1Kg gold (Trading Unit) of 999 purity, then you buy a Gold HNI and wait till expiry date). If you're a speculator, like me and the rest 95% of futures traders, then you dont wait till expiry date. you just take profits (hopefully :P) and run.
2)The price you see everywhere (MCX website, your amibroker chart etc) is quoted on basis of the Base Value Unit, not the trading unit.
3)Tick size is the minimum price fluctuation of the contract per base value unit (eg 1Rs/8g, Rs/10g)
4)All i know is 999 is more pure than 995 (i guess )
5)Value of Base value unit (mentioned in 2) ) (eg: 11,438 Rs/8gm or 14,715/10gm)
6)Margin is the minimum amount of money you need to have in your trading account to control 1 future.

notes:
1)Some math :Total value of the contract = Value * ( Trading unit / Base value unit )
2)Commission : 0.03%, but remember they charge commission on Total value, smart ass brokers . BTW if your broker charges less, do let me know
3)The prices for margin and value are as on 22/06/09.

enough of gyaan....

i'm not a professional and the info above may not be 100% right (or even 50% for that matter lol, remember i said MAY). If ever i was one, i would be pouring over my gold charts, not wasting time writing posts

happy trading everyone


@rpc : if you're like me who has a 4 digit account balance then i suggest you trade gold coins (gold guinea) till your account balance reaches some 6 digits then you can trade kilos of gold . yeah, and i wont be downloading GOLD HNI data from MCX when i'm trading GOLD Guinea. i tried desitradermall as you suggested but i can download data only 1 trading day at a time and maximum of 4 trading days for 24 hours, they want me to shell out some $$$ for more data.

Need Gold historical data

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Step by step Guide
1)go to mcxindia.com
2)click market data
3)then bhav copy (commoditywise)
4)click on the Commodity and select the contract month and click go
5)click view in excel and save it on your comp (i use firefox)
6)Repeat 4-5 for diff contract months and save all excel files into one folder
7)Go to amibroker and click import ascii data the parameters while importing are
Date_DMY, Ticker, Skip, Open, High, Low, Close, Skip, Skip, Volume, OpenInt
8)Amibroker will create a continuous contract for the given commodity
9)Export the data and post it here for all of us to use