Glossary
benchmark price series
Benchmark price series are officially administered reference prices produced by daily auctions in London and Shanghai. The LBMA gold and silver benchmarks are administered by ICE Benchmark Administration, and the Shanghai Gold Exchange publishes a yuan-denominated SHAU benchmark alongside its contract statistics.
What is benchmark price series?
A benchmark price series is the number contracts settle against, produced by a formal auction rather than scraped from screens. In the precious-metals slice of the catalog, three sources define the category.
LBMA Precious Metals Prices runs gold twice daily, silver at noon, and platinum and palladium twice daily, all administered by ICE Benchmark Administration. LPPM's platinum and palladium page republishes an on-page daily table of the LBMA Platinum and Palladium Price benchmarks. On the Shanghai side, the SGE publishes the Shanghai Gold Benchmark Price (SHAU) in yuan alongside Au99.99 daily trading statistics - a second regional benchmark family with its own administrator.
The auctions make the series auditable: each fix has a time, a method and an administrator, unlike a generic spot-price feed. That is also why using them triggers the benchmark-data-licence obligations documented on the same records.
Why does benchmark price series matter when choosing a dataset?
Which benchmark you cite determines which market you are actually measuring. A yuan-denominated SHAU fix and a London gold fix can diverge on the same day, and a contract drafted against one cannot be settled with the other.
The buyer consequence shows up in three places. Frequency differs by metal - gold twice daily and silver once at noon from LBMA means intraday strategies cannot be built on silver fixes at all. Coverage differs by administrator: platinum and palladium come from the same ICE-administered London auctions, not from a Chinese panel. And access differs sharply: the SGE ships Au99.99 daily statistics openly, while LBMA's historical archive sits behind MyLBMA and its use requires an ICE licence. Teams that treat 'the gold price' as one interchangeable series discover the mismatch when backtests fail to reconcile.
How do you evaluate benchmark price series in a data source?
- Identify the administering body. ICE Benchmark Administration administers the LBMA gold, silver, platinum and palladium benchmarks; SGE administers SHAU - the administrator defines the methodology.
- Count the fixes per day per metal. Gold twice daily, silver noon, platinum and palladium twice daily under LBMA; anything else is a different series, not 'the' fix.
- Check currency and venue. SHAU is yuan-denominated and published by SGE beside Au99.99 trading statistics, so it measures the Shanghai market, not London.
- Verify historical depth before backtesting. LPPM's page carries the daily table, while LBMA's historical archive requires MyLBMA access - confirm how far back your licensed rights reach.
- Confirm the endpoint actually returns data. The LPPM CSV export was present but empty at research time; always validate the delivery channel, not the documentation.
Related terms
Entries that sit next to benchmark price series in this glossary:
Frequently asked questions
What is a benchmark price series?
An officially administered reference price produced by a daily auction process - for example the ICE Benchmark Administration-run LBMA gold and silver benchmarks, or SGE's yuan-denominated Shanghai Gold Benchmark Price (SHAU).
How often are LBMA benchmarks set?
Gold twice daily, silver at noon, and platinum and palladium twice daily, according to the LBMA Precious Metals Prices record in the catalog.
Is the Shanghai benchmark the same as the London fix?
No. SHAU is published by the Shanghai Gold Exchange in yuan alongside Au99.99 daily statistics, while the London benchmarks are administered by ICE Benchmark Administration - different venues, currencies and methodologies.
Datasets containing this field
Datasets containing benchmark price series
6 datasets carry benchmark price series in the catalog. Open one, count the fields, judge for yourself.
BGS MineralsUK: UK and World Mineral Statistics
synthetic_id · year · yearbook_table_id …+13 more
BullionStar Gold Price and Historical Data: Singapore Bullion Exchange Prices
fromIndex · toIndex · dataSeries …+9 more
Indian Bureau of Mines statistics: Indian Minerals Yearbook & mineral production
State/District · Ore Produced · Avg. Grade (gram/tonne) …+6 more
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