Methodology

Eligibility, in order

1. Presence — a wrapper needs a price and 24h volume, or it is listed as no market.
2. Unit — gram gold is scaled to USD per troy ounce before any comparison.
3. Accrual — Ondo total-return tokens sit beside the book. Dividends are inside the price, so they do not set Prefer or Skip.
4. Core — dollar floor ($1M gold, $100k equities) and at least 10% of the lead wrapper's volume. At least 2 core wrappers are required for a reference.
5. Reference — volume-weighted price of the core. Blank unless two core wrappers exist.
6. Extreme — a core wrapper is at least 15 bps under that reference, and today's discount is at or above the 90th percentile of the 30-day series.
7. Fill — Prefer only when the recommended venue's ±2% ask book can take at least $10,000 and the average fill is still 15 bps under the reference. A missing book or a sample print stays Wait. The desk does not invent a size from 24h volume.
8. Trap — the cheapest priced name outside the core is a warning, not the call. With a live ask book, that cheap price holds for a stated dollar size, then it is gone.

Formulas

• basis bps = (price − liquid reference) / liquid reference × 10,000
• dollar gap = price − liquid reference, per ounce or share
• extra on a buy = |bps| / 10,000 × notional
• executable buy = ±2% ask depth × (discount bps − 15) / 100
• trap hold = ±2% ask depth × discount bps / 100
• benchmark bps = (liquid reference − Yahoo print) / Yahoo print × 10,000

The Yahoo line is a labeled benchmark for equities and ETFs. It never enters the liquid reference or the Prefer rule. Commodities such as gold have no LBMA print on CMC, so the desk says so and stays wrapper versus wrapper. Each Wait also says how far the discount is from the 15 bps band and from the 90th-percentile bar. When a day in the window cleared both, the desk names that date. The size on that date stays blank unless this load has a ±2% ask book. That dollar does not set today's ticket.

A live load, and one arithmetic check

Open the live Gold ticket at /desk?asset=GOLD. The desk call and the endpoints from that load sit on the same card. Counts for the map, the quotes, and the market pairs are under the call.

A worked fill, computed from the formula above and not from today's book: ±2% ask depth of $25,000 and a 62.9 bps discount is 25,000 × (62.9 − 15) / 100 = $11,967. That clears the $10,000 floor, so the ticket can say Prefer and name the venue. When the live rows omit ask depth, that dollar stays blank and the call stays Wait.

What Prefer means

Prefer names the cheapest core wrapper that clears the dollar floor, the lead-volume share, the 15 bps discount, and the 30-day extreme, and whose recommended venue can take at least $10,000 while the average fill stays 15 bps under the reference. The ticket states that dollar size and the venue. Walking the full ±2% ask book costs 200 bps at the margin and 100 bps on the average fill. Skip names a thin trap. When that trap has a live ask book, the ticket says how many dollars the cheap price holds before the discount is gone. Wait means the gap is inside the recent range, history is missing, the book is too tight, or the fill gives the discount back. A missing or sample book stays Wait.