Precious metals trading (especially gold and silver) has a major difference from stocks and cryptocurrencies: There is no unified, continuous central matching exchange , but rather a patchwork of multiple global markets (London Bullion Market LBMA, New York COMEX, Shanghai Gold Exchange SGE, and numerous market maker OTC liquidity). This leads to: 90% of precious metals APIs on the market have certain "pitfalls" . Today, let's discuss three of the most hidden yet fatal issues: data drift, gaps, and latency . The core concepts in the code examples apply to any market data interface. I. Data Drift: A One-Second Difference Can Mean a $5 Price Gap 1.1 What is Data Drift? Data drift refers to: At the same moment, gold/silver prices from different APIs show persistent systematic deviations , with these deviations fluctuating as market conditions change.…