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How to trade gold (XAU/USD)

By Saad El Soussi, UAE-authorized finfluencer · Updated 2026-11-08

How to trade gold in 7 steps: (1) learn what XAU/USD is and what one lot means, (2) open a demo account with a regulated broker, (3) trade the London and New York hours, (4) mark the levels where gold turned before, (5) wait for the price to reach one, (6) set the stop loss beyond the level and size the position from it, (7) write every trade down. In more detail: to trade gold you buy or sell XAU/USD, the price of one troy ounce in US dollars, through a broker that offers it as a CFD or spot contract, or you trade gold futures or ETFs. Gold trades almost around the clock on weekdays and moves about $82 between its high and low on a typical day (our measurement, August to October 2026). A workable approach is: trade during the London and New York hours, mark the levels where price has reacted before, wait for the price to reach one, size the position from your stop loss, and never risk more than a small fixed share of the account on one trade.

What XAU/USD is

XAU is the international code for one troy ounce of gold (31.1034768 grams) and USD is the US dollar, so XAU/USD is simply the gold price in dollars. On a trading platform it is quoted like a currency pair with a bid and an ask. You can see the current price on our live gold price page; XAU/USD explained covers the quote, lots, margin and hours in detail, and the gold price history shows where the price has been since 1970.

The ways to trade gold

Way	What you hold	Leverage	Best for
Spot gold / CFD (XAU/USD)	A contract on the price; no metal	Yes (capped at 20:1 for EU retail clients; not offered to US retail clients, see below)	Short-term trading, long or short
Gold futures (COMEX GC)	An exchange contract for 100 oz	Yes	Larger accounts; the market that sets the price
Gold ETFs	Shares in a fund that holds gold	Usually none	Long-term investors with a stock account
Coins and bars	The metal itself	None	Owning gold, not trading it

This guide is about the first: trading the price of gold. If you want to own gold, a jeweller or bullion dealer is a different conversation; the gold price page explains what they charge above the spot price.

How to trade gold in the United States

People in the US search for "how to trade XAU/USD in the USA" because the answer differs from Europe and the Gulf. US law treats any leveraged or margined commodity transaction offered to a retail customer as if it were a futures contract, unless the metal is actually delivered within 28 days (7 U.S.C. § 2(c)(2)(D), added by the Dodd-Frank Act in 2010; text read 8 November 2026). In practice a US retail trader cannot open a leveraged spot gold (XAU/USD CFD) position with a forex dealer the way a trader in Dubai or Copenhagen can. The US retail forex rules cover currency pairs only: a minimum security deposit of 2% on major pairs and 5% on all other pairs (17 CFR § 5.9), which is where the 50:1 and 20:1 figures you see at US dealers come from.

So from the US the ways to trade gold are: gold futures on COMEX through a futures broker registered with the CFTC and a member of the National Futures Association (look the firm up in NFA BASIC before sending money); gold ETFs in an ordinary brokerage account; or physical gold. The 100-ounce COMEX contract in the table above is the main one, and its margin is set by the exchange and the broker rather than by a fixed leverage ratio. Everything else on this page, the hours, the daily range, the stop sizes and the framework, applies to gold futures exactly as it applies to XAU/USD, because the futures market is where the price is set.

If an offshore website offers XAU/USD CFDs with 100:1 leverage to US residents, it is operating outside US rules, and there is no US regulator to turn to if the money does not come back. Our own pages are education: whether and how you can act on a gold idea depends on your broker and your country's rules, and our broker checklist links the official registers, country by country.

When gold trades

The market that sets the gold price, COMEX gold on CME Globex, is open from Sunday 6:00 p.m. to Friday 5:00 p.m. New York time with a 60-minute break every day from 5:00 p.m. (CME contract specifications). Spot gold at brokers follows the same rhythm. The busiest hours are when London and New York overlap, about 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon New York time, and the minutes after US economic releases at 8:30 a.m. New York time.

How far gold moves in a day

We measured it on COMEX gold futures over the 64 trading days from 3 August to 30 October 2026: the gap between the day's high and low was $82.10 on a typical day (the median). The quietest day moved $38.30 and the busiest $206.60. In October 2026 alone the typical day was $62.60.

On most platforms one lot of gold is 100 ounces (check your broker's contract specification), so every $1 move is $100 per lot. A typical $82 day is therefore a swing of about $8,200 on one lot. That number should decide how you size positions before you think about where gold is going.

Trading gold with a small account

The smallest position at most brokers is 0.01 lots, which is 1 ounce on the usual 100-ounce lot (check your broker's contract details). At that size every $1 move in gold is $1 of profit or loss, so a typical day's range of about $82 is an $82 swing, and a $10 stop risks $10. The money the broker sets aside (the margin) is the position's value divided by the leverage: with gold at $4,074.90 on 6 November 2026, 0.01 lots is worth $4,074.90, and at 20:1, the cap for retail clients in the EU, the margin is about $204. The margin calculator and the lot size calculator do both sums for any price.

What a small account cannot do is use a normal stop at a bigger size. If 1% of the account is less than the dollar distance of a sensible stop at 0.01 lots, the honest answer is to stay on the demo account longer, not to tighten the stop until it fits: stops of a few dollars on gold are mostly hit by noise (see stop loss).

What moves the gold price

The US dollar. Gold is priced in dollars, so a stronger dollar tends to weigh on it and a weaker dollar to lift it: in months when the dollar index fell, gold rose 72% of the time (gold vs the US dollar).
US interest rates. Gold pays no interest, so what matters is the 10-year yield after inflation (the real yield). Since 2003 gold rose in 74% of the months when it fell and in 35% of the months when it rose; Fed hikes alone were a weaker guide (gold and interest rates).
Inflation, jobs and Fed decisions. The release days for US CPI, non-farm payrolls and FOMC decisions are the days gold moves most.
Fear. Wars, banking stress and political shocks send money into gold as a safe haven.
Central banks. Central banks bought 1,050.8 tonnes of gold in 2023 and 1,044.6 tonnes in 2024, according to the World Gold Council, and 863 tonnes in 2025 (World Gold Council), against an average of 473 tonnes a year in 2010-2021.

A simple gold trading framework

There is no strategy that wins every time, and anyone selling one is selling something else. If you plan to follow signals instead of your own setups, read gold signals explained first: what a signal contains, what a pip is worth per lot, and what our published record looks like, losing weeks included. What follows is a framework that keeps you in the game long enough to learn. For the full version, with measured session and hourly ranges, three setups and a worked trade, read our gold trading strategy.

Trade the active hours. London and New York, and know the time of the day's US data before you start. Avoid opening trades in the thin Asian hours until you have experience.
Mark the levels. On the 1-hour and 4-hour charts, note the prices where gold has turned or paused in recent days: yesterday's high and low, the week's high and low, round numbers. Price reacts to levels it has reacted to before, often enough to matter.
Wait for the price to come to you. Enter at or near a level, not in the middle of nowhere. If it does not come, there is no trade; that is a decision too.
Place the stop loss where the idea is wrong, just beyond the level, not at a fixed number of dollars that happens to feel comfortable.
Size the position from the stop. Lot size = risk amount ÷ (stop distance × 100). With $50 of risk and a $5 stop, that is 0.10 lots. The lot size calculator does it for you.
Take profit at the next level, and aim for targets at least as far away as your stop, so one winner pays for one loser.
Write every trade down. After fifty trades the journal tells you what works for you and what does not.

A worked example

Gold has bounced twice from $3,950 this week and is trading at $3,980. You decide to buy if it comes back to $3,952, with a stop at $3,944 ($8 below the entry, under the level) and a target at $3,976 (the previous high). Risk $50 on a $5,000 account: lot size = 50 ÷ (8 × 100) = 0.06 lots. If the stop is hit you lose 0.06 × 8 × 100 = $48. If the target is hit you make 0.06 × 24 × 100 = $144, three times the risk. You do not need to win every trade for that to work.

The mistakes that empty gold accounts

Too big. Leverage lets you trade 1 lot on a small account; an ordinary $82 day then moves the account by thousands.
No stop loss, or a stop that gets moved further away when price approaches it.
Trading the news candle. The first minutes after US data are fast and spreads widen; wait for the move to settle.
Revenge trading after a loss to get the money back.
Changing the plan after three losses. Judge a plan over 50 to 100 trades, not three.

How SesTrading trades gold

We trade gold ourselves. VIP members receive each trade when it is sent, with the entry, the stop loss and the targets, and every week we publish the results in our public Telegram channel, losing trades included. We do not promise profits, because nobody honestly can. If you want to see what a plan looks like in practice before you build your own, that is the place to look.

Follow gold with SesTrading

Open our bot to ask questions, see this week's results and find out how the channel works. It answers in English.

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Questions people ask

Can I trade XAU/USD in the USA?

Not as a leveraged spot or CFD position with a retail forex dealer: US law treats leveraged retail commodity trades as futures unless the metal is delivered within 28 days (7 U.S.C. § 2(c)(2)(D)). US traders trade gold through COMEX futures at a CFTC-registered, NFA-member futures broker, through gold ETFs, or by buying the metal. The hours, ranges and framework on this page apply to the futures the same way.

How do I start trading gold as a beginner?

Learn what one lot of XAU/USD is worth per $1 move, open a demo account, trade only the London and New York hours, set every stop loss beyond a level and size the position from it so one loss costs about 1% of the account, and keep a journal of at least 50 demo trades before using real money.

What is the smallest gold trade?

At most brokers 0.01 lots, which is 1 troy ounce: each $1 move in gold is $1 of profit or loss. With gold at $4,074.90 (6 November 2026) and 20:1 leverage, the margin for 0.01 lots is about $204. Check your broker's contract details, because lot sizes differ.

How much money do I need to trade gold?

That depends on your broker's minimum and on the position size you can trade while keeping risk small. What matters is the share of the account you risk per trade, not the amount: a $5 stop on 0.01 lots risks $5. Start on a demo account first.

What is the best time to trade gold?

When London and New York are both open, about 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon New York time, and around US data releases at 8:30 a.m. New York time. Volume and movement are highest then.

Is gold trading profitable?

It can be and it often is not. Regulators in the EU found that 74 to 89% of retail CFD accounts typically lose money. Position size, stop losses and patience decide more than predictions do.

What is one lot of gold?

On most platforms 100 troy ounces, so each $1 move in the gold price is $100 per lot. Some brokers use other sizes, so check the contract specification.

Can I trade gold on weekends?

No. Gold trades from Sunday evening to Friday evening New York time. Prices can gap when the market reopens after weekend news.

Authorized in the UAESaad Nizar El Soussi, founder of SesTrading, is listed by the UAE Capital Market Authority as an authorized finfluencer (entry 193, added 24 September 2026). Check the official list.