Precious metals investment terms A to Z

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E-Mini

E-mini is an electronically traded futures contract on the CME that indicates a ‘smaller version’ of the normal future contracts. E-mini enables market participation with a lower capital. In other words, it refers to a contract with miniature size of normal contracts.

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Earnings Season

What is the most important season? Most people prefer summer as one can swim and sip drinks on the beach shirtless. Personally, I like winter when the earth is covered by snow – you can ski then and drink tea with rum without causing strange looks. Spring and fall have their own charms, but the most important season for the Wall Street is earnings season!

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ECB (European Central Bank)

The European Central Bank, based in Frankfurt, Germany, is the central bank of the 17 member states of the Eurozone. In the short run, ECB's actions can drive the gold price, but over the long run, other factors appear to be more important.

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ECN (Electronic Communication Network)

Electronic Communication Network (ECN) in capital markets refers to an electronic system that attempts to eliminate the role of a third party in the execution of orders.

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Economic Crisis

Usually, everything is going fine. But from time to time something bad happens and the crisis breaks out. It may either apply to our business (or personal life), or the whole economy. Then, we talk about “economic crisis”.

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Eligible Gold

Comex has several warehouses for metals (as investors may take delivery), which contain lots of gold. The bullion held in these warehouses is divided into two categories: eligible and registered gold.

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Elliott Wave Theory

Elliott wave theory is one of the most popular theories used in technical analysis, that might be helpful in understanding the way that trends develop, and therefore in making more accurate prognoses. EWT is often applied to many markets, including gold and silver.

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Emerging Markets

No longer underdeveloped country. But not a developed economy yet. Emerging market is a country which has some features of the developed markets, but does not fully satisfy all of their standards. The term is, thus, imprecise or outdated and some people prefer talking about developing countries or low income countries, middle income countries and high income countries. However, the main features of emerging markets are as follows: lower income than in advanced countries, relatively rapid economic growth, high volatility, capital markets less mature than in developed markets, higher than average returns.

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Epidemic

After the outbreak of the COVID-19, we are now all epidemiologists! But what does an “epidemic” really means? Well, it is an outbreak of disease that spreads quickly and affects many individuals at the same time. What is important, an epidemic refers to a sudden increase in the number of cases of a disease above what is normally expected, or to diseases that have grown out of control. So, a regular, seasonal flu is normally not called an epidemic, although it may affect many people. But when the flu virus mutates and infects much more individuals than normally expected, then it becomes epidemic.

The epidemic occurs when people do not have immunity to a new pathogen (or their immunity to an established pathogen decreased significantly). The latest example is, of course, COVID-19 caused by a new coronavirus called SARS-CoV-2 that passed from animals (possibly bats or pangolins).

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ETF (Exchange Traded Fund)

Exchange Traded Funds track the value of a particular index, commodity (for instance a gold ETF tracks the gold price) or currency and its highly liquid shares can be bought and sold just like stocks on the stock exchange. ETFs may be attractive as speculative vehicles because of their low costs, tax efficiency, and stock-like features.

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Ethereum

Bitcoin is not the only cryptocurrency game in town. There are plenty of them – Bitcoin is simply the most popular and largest in terms of market capitalization (as of April 30, 2019). But Ethereum ranks second – and according to its supporters, it is better than Bitcoin as it exploits the full potential of the blockchain (which is a digital, public ledger that records online transactions made in Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies).

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ETN (Exchange Traded Note)

Exchange Traded Note (ETN) is a debt security (derivatives) issued by an underwriting bank, whose value depends on the movements of a stock index or some other benchmark. They were created by Barclays in 2006 and have become an alternative to ETFs. Gold ETN is an instrument designed to track the price of gold and silver ETN is an instrument designed to track the price of silver.

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Euro

The euro is the official currency of the Eurozone, which is a monetary union consisting of 19 of the 28 member states of the European Union. The euro was introduced in 1999 as an accounting currency, but physical coins and banknotes entered circulation in 2002. The currency is managed by the European Central Bank, based in Frankfurt. Its international code is “EUR”.

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