Price jumpiness
This condition measures how jumpy the gold price has been lately. The market prices this into gold options. Cboe publishes the value each day as the Cboe Gold Volatility Index. We treat this as a risk and entry-quality gauge, not a return forecast. No published study shows this level predicts future gold returns.
- Share of the score
- 10%
- Share used today
- 11.1%
- Source
- Cboe Gold Volatility Index; used internally, raw values not republished per licence
- How often it updates
- daily
- Date of the newest figure
- 2026-09-18
- Newest figure
- n/a
- How fresh it is
- Up to date. The newest figure is 2 days old, and we stop counting this part once it passes 7 days. An old figure left counting would quietly drag the score toward whatever was true last month.
- How strong the evidence is
- weak. It rates how rough the ride is, not where the price goes
What we look at
The daily level of the Cboe Gold Volatility Index. We rank the level against its own past.
Why it matters if you're buying gold
A calm price drifts. A jumpy one swings several percent in both directions inside a week. If you are buying once, with an amount that matters to you, jumpiness decides how much the exact day you happened to buy will matter. Buy into a calm stretch and the day barely counts. Buy into a jumpy one and it counts a great deal, both ways. Jumpy periods have also gone with wider gaps between buying and selling prices, and with bigger premiums on coins, so getting in costs more. One oddity is worth knowing. Gold gets jumpier when other, riskier things go wrong, not when gold itself does (Baur, 2012). That is the fingerprint of somewhere people run to when they are frightened. None of this predicts the price. It describes how bumpy the road is.
What this cannot tell you
Weak as a predictor of returns. We include this condition because it affects the risk you take and the price friction you meet, not because it predicts the price. We do not publish the raw values (Cboe licensing). We credit Cboe in methodology text only, as the licence requires.
Today's reading in plain words
Today this condition reads 6/100, in a historically unfavorable range for a long-term buyer.
Notes: The rank against history can be shown. The raw daily values cannot be shown, under the Cboe licence.
How the score is worked out
We rank the daily volatility level against its own past. Then we flip it: low jumpiness gives a high score. We cannot show the raw values on the site. Cboe's data licence does not allow it. We explain this on the provenance page.
Which way it points. Low jumpiness raises the score. High jumpiness lowers it.
What the evidence says
- No published study shows implied-volatility levels predict future gold returns. We label this condition as a risk and entry-quality gauge, not a direction call.
- Baur (2012): gold's jumpiness works the opposite way to shares, a safe-haven signature. Volatility rises with negative surprises in risky assets, not with negative surprises in gold itself.
- Todorova (2017) adds detail to the volatility-return pattern for gold.
If you are selling
High jumpiness raises the cost of options and widens dealer spreads on both sides. Execution costs go up for sellers just as much as for buyers. It is not a direction call to sell.
Volatility comes from the Cboe Gold Volatility Index, used internally under proprietary rights. Raw values are not republished on this site. Cboe is credited in methodology text only. See the methodology page for the full formula, and the provenance page for where each number comes from and how fresh it is.