A troy ounce (denoted on the stock exchange as t oz or ozt) is equal to 31.1034768 grams and is used as a measure of weight in the banking and jewelry industries when weighing gold, silver, platinum, palladium, and sometimes in the cosmetics industry to determine especially valuable components.
A troy ounce should be distinguished from a regular ounce - Avoirdupois Ounce, which is equal to 28.349523125 grams.
How the weight of precious metals is measured, and what does the grain have to do with it, in our new material on the Masterforex-V Academy Wiki.
History of measuring the weight of gold in ancient times
How to measure the weight of a product so that neither the seller nor the buyer is deceived?
Places like Karachi, New Delhi, Pakistan, Mumbai, Singapore and Nepal use the Tola system to weigh gold. Tola means weight and the name has its roots in Sanskrit. It weighs 3/8 troy ounce or 180 grains.
Ancient Babylon and the Sumerians gave a weight system consisting of shekels, minas and talents (1 talent consisted of 60 minas, and a mina consisted of 60 shekels). This weight system migrated first to Ancient Greece, and then to the Roman Empire, where the Roman talent already consisted of 100 pondus - pound (translated from Latin - weight). Each pondus consisted of 16 ounces (from the Latin uncia).
International avoirdupois system (oz)
An international ounce is 28.349523125 grams, according to the International Yard and Pound Agreement of 1959. It was signed by the United States of America and the countries of the Commonwealth of Nations.
In the avoirdupois system, sixteen ounces equal a pound with the same name. It is defined as follows: 7000 grains. Therefore, one ounce totals 437.5 grains.
It is still the standard unit of weight in the United States. In the UK it ceased to be a legal unit of measurement in 2000, but is still widely used on an informal basis. It is also the traditional measure of portion sizes in British restaurants.
Weight measurement in the Middle Ages in Europe
As we see, all these pounds, ounces, libres were inherited by Europe from the Roman Empire, and were not at all invented by Henry III in England, as many observers write.
The city of Troyes in France, as a center of trade in the early Middle Ages, added the word troy to the ounce, and its weight was not the usual 16th part of a pound, but 12th part. Thus, a troy ounce is slightly heavier than a regular ounce. In addition, there was the Parisian ounce, the Dutch ounce, the Nuremberg ounce, the Bremen ounce, etc. That is, there were differences in ounce weight not only between countries, but also between cities!
But Henry III in 1266 legislated for the weight of an ounce - the weight of 640 pieces of well-dried wheat grains. According to this standard, later (already under Henry VII) official metal weights were created, which were kept in the Treasury in London and with which the royal assayers checked their weights. Copies of these standard weights were made and distributed throughout the English counties.
The Troy Ounce finally became the official unit of measurement for the gold and silver trade in London in 1527.
Why is there no single standard
An ounce is a unit that is measured in different ways. The explanation for this is as follows. It has been used historically in many parts of the world, at different points in history, and for different applications. Therefore, unequal mass standards were taken as a basis.
How much does an ounce weigh in different values? The international version of avoirdupois calls 28.349523125 437.5 grams. An international troy ounce is 31.1034768 480 grams, a French ounce is 30.59 grams. There are other numerical values. It is worth learning more about what types of this unit of measurement are used in the modern world.
Troy ounce in the modern world
The metric system has been adopted almost completely throughout the world , however, in the precious metals market, the troy ounce is still the royal standard of purity and quality and continues to be the main unit of weight in their trade.
When trading on the stock exchange, to show that the weight of the metal is indicated in troy ounces, the symbol X is added to the name:
- palladium - XPD
- platinum - XPT
- silver – X AG
- gold – X AU
Example: online chart of the cost of a troy ounce of silver in US dollars.
XAGUSD chart courtesy of TradingView
Determining the price of gold using the London fixing
How much 1 ounce of gold will cost in grams is now determined by the London fixing 2 times a day - in the morning at half past ten and in the afternoon at three o'clock. Previously, this was not necessary because the gold standard was in effect. The price of gold was fixed at three pounds seventeen shillings and nine pence for the purchase and three pounds seventeen shillings and ten and a half pence for the sale. Fixing was first carried out in 1919. the twelfth of September. Since then, the fixing process has not changed much.
Troy ounce and Forex
Today, many brokers can provide you with the opportunity to trade precious metals, which are also measured in troy ounces. The best of them, according to the Forex Academy Masterforex-V broker rating, are:
| Broker name | Year of foundation | Trading instruments | Licenses | |
| 1. | NordFX | 2008 | currency pairs, commodity futures, stock indices, cryptocurrencies, stocks | CySEC, MiFID |
| 2. | Swissquote | 1996 | commodity futures, currency pairs, stock index futures, cryptocurrencies, metals, ETFs, warrants, shares | FINMA, FCA, SFC, Dubai FSA |
| 3. | Dukascopy | 1998 | stock indices, commodity futures, currency pairs, stocks, bonds, ETFs | FINMA, FCMC |
| 4. | Alpari | 1998 | metals, energy, indices, currency pairs, cryptocurrencies | — |
| 5. | FxPro | 2006 | indices, commodity futures, stocks, currency pairs | FCA, CySEC, FSB, Dubai FSA, BaFin, ACPR, CNMV |
| 6. | Interactive Brokers | 1977 | stocks, bonds, derivatives, currency pairs, forward contracts, bills, warrants, options, stock indices, currency and commodity futures | NFA, CFTC, FCA, IIROC |
| 7. | Oanda | 1996 | bonds, stock indices, currency pairs, commodity futures | NFA, CFTC, FCA, IIROC, MAS, ASIC |
| 8. | FXCM | 1999 | currency pairs, stock indices, commodity futures, cryptocurrencies | FCA, BaFin, ACPR, AMF, Dubai FSA,SFC, ISA, ASIC, FSB |
| 9. | Saxo Bank | 1992 | currency and commodity futures, stock indices, currency pairs, ETFs, stocks, bonds, derivatives | Danish FSA, Consob, Czech National Bank, Bank of the Netherlands, ASIC, Monetary Authority of Singapore, FINMA, Bank of France, Central Bank of the UAE, Japanese Financial Services Agency, Securities and Futures Commission in Hong Kong. |
| 10. | FOREX.com | 1999 | currency pairs, stocks, stock indices, commodity futures, cryptocurrencies | NFA, CFTC, FCA, ASIC, JSDA, MAS, SFC |
| 11. | FIBO Group | 1998 | metals, energy, currency pairs, commodities, cryptocurrencies, indices | CySEC |
| 12. | FINAM FOREX | 1994 | currency pairs | Bank of Russia |
As we can see, the troy ounce remained in use for at least seven centuries and will probably continue to be used in the future.
Sincerely, wiki Masterforex-V - free (school) and professional Masterforex-V training courses for working on Forex, stock, futures, commodity and cryptocurrency exchanges.
General information
Mass is the property of physical bodies to resist acceleration. Mass, unlike weight, does not change depending on the environment and does not depend on the gravitational force of the planet on which this body is located. Mass m
determined using Newton's second law, according to the formula:
F
=
m a
, where
F
is force and
a
is acceleration.
Mass and weight
The word “weight” is often used in everyday life when people talk about mass. In physics, weight, in contrast to mass, is a force acting on a body due to the attraction between bodies and planets. Weight can also be calculated using Newton's second law: P
=
m g
, where
m
is the mass and
g
is the acceleration due to gravity. This acceleration occurs due to the gravitational force of the planet near which the body is located, and its magnitude also depends on this force. The acceleration of free fall on Earth is 9.80665 meters per second, and on the Moon it is approximately six times less - 1.63 meters per second. Thus, a body weighing one kilogram weighs 9.8 newtons on Earth and 1.63 newtons on the Moon.
Moon mass 7.3477×10²² kg
Gravitational mass
Gravitational mass shows what gravitational force acts on a body (passive mass) and with what gravitational force the body acts on other bodies (active mass). With an increase in active gravitational mass
body, its force of attraction also increases. It is this force that controls the movement and location of stars, planets and other astronomical objects in the universe. Tides are also caused by the gravitational forces of the Earth and Moon.
With increasing passive gravitational mass
the force with which the gravitational fields of other bodies act on this body also increases.
Inert mass
Inertial mass is the property of a body to resist movement. It is precisely because a body has mass that a certain force must be applied to move the body from its place or change the direction or speed of its movement. The greater the inertial mass, the greater the force required to achieve this. Mass in Newton's second law is precisely inertial mass. The gravitational and inertial masses are equal in magnitude.
Mass and relativity
According to the theory of relativity, gravitating mass changes the curvature of the space-time continuum. The greater the mass of a body, the stronger the curvature around this body, therefore, near bodies of large mass, such as stars, the trajectory of light rays is bent. This effect in astronomy is called gravitational lenses. On the contrary, far from large astronomical objects (massive stars or their clusters called galaxies), the movement of light rays is linear. The main postulate of the theory of relativity is the postulate about the finiteness of the speed of propagation of light. Several interesting consequences follow from this. Firstly, one can imagine the existence of objects with such a large mass that the second cosmic velocity of such a body will be equal to the speed of light, i.e. no information from this object will be able to reach the outside world. Such cosmic objects in the general theory of relativity are called “black holes” and their existence has been experimentally proven by scientists. Secondly, when an object moves at near-light speed, its inertial mass increases so much that local time inside the object slows down compared to time. measured by stationary clocks on Earth. This paradox is known as the “twin paradox”: one of them goes into space flight at near-light speed, the other remains on Earth. Upon returning from the flight twenty years later, it turns out that the twin astronaut is biologically younger than his brother!
Brief historical excursion
In ancient times and the Middle Ages, the main unit of mass measurement was the pound. In many countries it corresponded to different weights. So, in Russia it was 0.41, in Britain - 0.35, and in Ancient Rome - 0.32745 kilograms.
One twelfth of every pound was called an ounce. They calculated not only mass, but also area, length, and volume. Many of these units of measurement still exist today. An example is the American and English fluid ounce (“fl oz”), which is approximately 30 milliliters, and the so-called avoirdupois ounce (“oz at”), which is approximately 28 grams.
