The instrument retail traders size wrong most often, and the calculators that stop it happening.
A standard lot of gold is 100 ounces. A standard lot of a currency pair is 100,000 units. Your platform shows "1.00" for both.
Every other difference follows from this. If you size a gold trade using the habits built on EUR/USD, the position will not be the size you think it is, and you will find out when the stop is hit. The calculators below use the gold contract, not the currency one.
| Symbol | XAU/USD, often shown as XAUUSD or GOLD |
|---|---|
| Standard lot | 100 ounces |
| Mini lot | 10 ounces |
| Pip size | 0.10 |
| Pip value, 1.00 lot | $10.00 |
| Quote currency | US dollar |
| Active sessions | London and New York |
These are market conventions and the same figures the calculators use. Full XAU/USD guide.
Gold runs nearly around the clock through the trading week, with a short daily break at most brokers around the rollover. Most of the activity sits in the London and New York sessions.
Gold is priced in dollars and pays no interest, so United States inflation and interest rate expectations concern it directly.
One hundred ounces. Not 100,000 units, which is what a standard lot means on a currency pair. This single difference is behind most oversized gold positions, because the platform shows the same "1.00" for both.
Normally 0.10, which makes one pip worth $10 on a standard lot — the same figure as a dollar-quoted currency pair, arrived at by completely different arithmetic. Some brokers call 0.01 a pip on gold, which changes every risk figure by a factor of ten, so check yours.
Because that is the convention of the market it trades in. It is why United States data moves gold: a change in what the dollar is worth changes the price of gold expressed in dollars, before anything about gold itself has changed.
Nearly around the clock through the trading week, with a short daily break at most brokers around the rollover. The exact window is set by your broker rather than by the market.
It commonly moves further in a day than a major currency pair, which is why the same lot size carries much more risk. Rather than take that as a general claim, size the position from your own stop and let the calculator produce the number.
Yes, and it is usually quoted in cents rather than pips. It varies by broker and widens around news like any other instrument. The broker directory records what each firm advertises.
No live price, no signals, no support and resistance levels, no view on where gold is going.
Live pricing needs a market data feed this site does not run, and levels invented to fill the gap would be worse than leaving it. What is here is the arithmetic, the hours and the releases — all of it checkable.