Is there a best month for gold?

The table below gives all twelve months, and the chart their medians.

How we measured a month

Each month's change is its average gold price against the previous month's, from the World Bank's monthly series, so January's change runs from December's average to January's. Every year from 1971 to 2025 counts, which gives each calendar month 55 changes.

We start in 1971 because until the US closed its gold window that August, US dollars were convertible to gold at a fixed $35 an ounce (Federal Reserve History), and through most of the 1960s the monthly average sat at $35. A change of exactly zero counts as flat: the series records almost every month from 1968 in whole dollars, so two months in a row can show the same figure.

Every month from 1971 to 2025

The median change from the month before, the number of years out of 55 in which each month rose, fell or was flat, and the average change.

The median is the middle year of the 55, so it shows a typical year. The average adds in the size of every move, and in every month except March it comes out above the median.

September shows the gap best. Its average change is +1.39%, the third highest of the twelve, yet it fell in 28 of the 55 years and rose in 27, for a median of -0.16%. On average its rises were bigger than its falls, which pulls the average up while the typical September was slightly down. That is why the typical month on this page is the median.

January: the best record, with 17 falls

January's median of +1.56% is the largest of any month, and its 36 rises are the most. February is next by median, at +0.91% with 29 rises, then August at +0.75% with 31. The lowest median is April's, -0.56%, with 25 rises and 29 falls. Across the twelve months the medians run from -0.56% to +1.56%.

Nothing in these figures says whether the next January will rise or fall.

From 2000 to 2025

The same measure over the 26 years from 2000 to 2025.

January is again first, with a median of +1.92%: 21 rises, 5 falls and no flat months in 26 years. February is second at +1.64%, with 16 rises, 9 falls and 1 flat. The bottom moves: from 2000 the lowest median is July's, -0.56%, with 11 rises and 15 falls, while April, the lowest from 1971, has a median of +0.26%. Change the years and the ranking changes.

The calendar and a short-term trade

Our gold signals are short-term trades, and a monthly average says nothing about where a single one will go.

The long run is in gold price history since 1960, each year's average in gold price by year, and the same prices in August 2026 dollars in gold adjusted for inflation. For a shorter clock, the gold market page has gold's range by day and by hour in 2026.

Where the numbers come from

Gold prices are the World Bank's monthly averages from its Commodity Markets "Pink Sheet", in US dollars per troy ounce, taken from datasets/gold-prices on GitHub, published under the Public Domain Dedication and License (PDDL). We worked out the change from the month before for every month from January 1971 to December 2025 and grouped the changes by calendar month. They are in dollars of the day, with no inflation adjustment; the real prices on the inflation page use the US consumer price index (CPI-U) from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, via datasets/cpi-us. We read both on 24 October 2026.