Financial markets around the world have widely followed the price of gold. Gold was the basis of economic capitalism for hundreds of years before the repeal of the gold standard, which led to the expansion of fiat money in which paper money did not necessarily imply a backing by any physical form of monetisation. AU is the code for gold in the periodic table of the elements and the price of the symbol was quoted in USD, which is a common yardstick for measuring the value of gold around the world.