broker question, why/does gold skip the October contract?

[yodaler]

I see that neither the Gold GC 10-21 nor the GC 10-20 contract can be loaded in NinjaTrader.

I also observe this pattern of rolls in the GC (COMEX Gold) contract from another platform, and wonder why (or IF?) this is the expected contract roll pattern.

In December, roll to G/Feb of the next year. (2 months later)
In February, roll to J/April (2 months later)
In April, roll to M/June (2 months later)
In June, roll to Q/August (2 months later)
In August, roll to Z/December (4 months later)... thus skipping the V/October contract.

Can anyone explain why trading in the months of August, September, October and November all takes place on the GCZ December contract? Why is October skipped?

For that matter, since the CME lists monthly contracts, why are January, March, May, July, Sept, Nov skipped as well?

The odd thing is that when googling around, I see that NinjaTrader Brokerage is talking about rolling to the October contract... which leaves me even more puzzled. https://ninjatrader.com/blog/gold-fu...-october-2020/ but then again, it does look like an automated posting, so maybe its just wrong automation too...

[NinjaTrader_Marco]

Hello,

Thanks for your post.

NinjaTrader does not include the October rollover for the GC in the database as this has very low volume and most users go to the November contract.

You can manually add the 10-21 contract to the instrument from the Control Center> Tools> Instruments> search GC> Edit> Contract Months> Add> set the CME parameters for the instrument.

Please let me know if I may be of any further assistance.