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Create AccountGold Lot Size Calculator
Size an XAU/USD trade from a stop measured in dollars, the way gold is actually quoted.
Your Result
The calculation runs in your browser. Rates used for currency conversion are indicative — check your broker for the exact figure.
Gold traders talk about stops in dollars — "my stop is five dollars away" — while lot size calculators usually ask for pips. That mismatch causes more sizing errors on XAU/USD than anything else, because one gold pip is $0.10 and a five dollar stop is fifty pips, not five.
This calculator takes the stop the way gold is quoted and does the conversion for you. It also handles the mini and micro contracts, which many brokers offer on gold and which change the answer by a factor of ten or a hundred.
When to use it
- On every XAU/USD entry, since gold ranges are wide and sizing errors are expensive.
- When switching between a standard 100 ounce contract and a mini or micro.
- On a prop firm account, where a single gold trade can breach a daily limit.
- When a gold stop has to sit outside an intraday range of ten dollars or more.
A standard gold lot is 100 ounces, so every dollar of price movement is $100 per lot.
Risk Amount = Balance × Risk %
Value Per $1 Move = Contract Ounces × Lots
Lot Size = Risk Amount ÷ (Stop in Dollars × Contract Ounces)- Standard (100 oz) — a $1 move is worth $100 per lot, and one pip of $0.10 is worth $10.
- Mini (10 oz) — a $1 move is worth $10 per lot.
- Micro (1 oz) — a $1 move is worth $1 per lot, which suits small accounts and wide stops.
- Gold can move ten dollars or more in a session, so a stop that looks generous in pips may be tight in practice.
A $10,000 account risking 1% on gold with a $5.00 stop, standard contract.
Working: $100 ÷ ($5.00 × 100) = 0.20 lots, which is 20 ounces. If gold falls five dollars the loss is $100, exactly the 1% planned. The same stop in pips would be 50 — enter that into a forex calculator by mistake and the size comes out ten times too large.
How many pips is a one dollar move in gold?
Ten. A gold pip is conventionally $0.10, so a five dollar stop is fifty pips. Some brokers quote gold to two decimals and call the last digit a pip, which makes it a hundred — check your platform before assuming.
Why is gold sizing different from forex?
Because the contract is 100 ounces rather than 100,000 currency units, and the price is in the thousands. Both change the money value of a given price move.
What stop distance suits gold?
Wider than most currency pairs. Gold routinely ranges ten to thirty dollars in a day, so a two dollar stop is inside the noise on most timeframes.
Does this work for silver?
The arithmetic is the same but the contract is 5,000 ounces, so the numbers are very different. Use the pip value calculator with XAG/USD selected for silver.
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