shorting gold and futures contracts?

First off, Daisy is an idiot and doesn't know anything about anything.

Second off, no you can't profit from arbitrage in the gold futures market because there are huge players in the market that make sure that gold futures are priced at the arbitrage-free price. The futures price for gold is given by the risk-free rate, the spot price of gold, and the lease rate for gold. The futures price is the arbitrage-free price all the time and if it diverged even a penny, the money center banks just play the arb. You can't do that because you can't borrow money like they can.

The arbitrage free pricing for gold futures is given in any elementary futures book. Very simple.

Yes you can! Are you aware that one gold contract can move hundreds of dollars in a few minutes, thousands of dollars in a couple of days (or less).

Anyway when you "short" a futures contract you're not borrowing it from anyone (that's only with stocks). Shorting a contract is really selling a contract (it's the opposite of buying a contract).

Read several books on Futures. What you want to do is fairly sophisticated.

You could do something like that in the commodity markets and futures. But gold is not a simply futures contract to handle. Most gold trading are with coins or bullion that come from gold sellers who don't have contracts. With the commodity market, you would have to buy gold in such large quantities, that it would be near insane. First you would need the capitol to back a margin for the gold and the commodity market isn't dealing in a case of gold you would find at a pawn shop. Their not trading in a box of gold coins. It would be more like whole distribution from mining. Many a armor car load or something in that level. If you can afford a armor car delivery of gold, then you probably could short gold. If your looking for 10 gold coins or something, then best forget it and do what the regular people do or find some derivatives for speculation markets.