In the early hours of the New York morning on Thursday, when scarcely a few hundred lots of gold futures are usually traded, a wave of buy orders worth over $2.3 billion surged into the market. Prices soared 3 percent in just 10 minutes, setting the tone for the next 12 hours of trade and puzzling many traders and investors who have been rattled by a series of similarly abrupt, and largely unexplained, trade surges over the past two weeks. While sudden swings in the price of gold are nothing new, the usual causes, a shock in economic data or a “fat finger” erroneous trade, don’t seem to fit. While the U.S. dollar had also tumbled on Thursday, bullion’s move was far more extreme. “What’s unusual about these moves is the price stays at a new level so that suggests it’s a natural buyer or seller,” said Chris Concannon, executive VP of New York-based electronic trader Virtu Financial. “This is moving to and setting a new price level, so it can only be done by someone who’s buying or selling substantial amounts and then holding.” Perhaps the swing in price is more a case of “Goldfinger” rather than “fat finger?!”