The Impact of Consumer Confidence Index on Gold Futures Volatility—Evidence from the GARCH-MIDAS Model

China's gold futures have attracted the attention of many scholars since they were listed and traded on January 9, 2008, but their focus has been on investors in the financial sector, and rarely explored from the perspective of ordinary consumers. From the consumer's point of view, we use the mixed GARCH-MIDAS model to estimate whether there is a certain impact on the volatility of China's gold futures by using the fixed and rolling estimation methods to reflect the consumer confidence index reflecting the strength of consumer confidence. The empirical results show that the consumer confidence index has a significant negative impact on the long-term volatility of gold futures returns, indicating that the consumer confidence index is an important factor affecting the volatility of gold futures returns.