Gold (XAUUSD) expert advisors and indicators

Gold is one of the most traded symbols in MetaTrader, and one of the easiest to get wrong with a tool built for currency pairs. It moves further, faster and at different times than most forex pairs, so expert advisors and indicators for XAUUSD need their own settings and their own testing.

Why gold needs its own tools

A typical EURUSD day covers 60 to 80 pips. Gold often travels $20 to $40 in a day, which on most broker feeds is 200 to 400 “pips” of 10 cents each. A stop loss, trailing step or grid spacing tuned for a currency pair is far too tight on gold, and a lot size that is comfortable on EURUSD can be several times riskier on XAUUSD.

Gold also reacts sharply to US economic data, interest-rate expectations and risk sentiment. Moves of $15 in a few minutes around a US inflation or jobs report are common. Tools built for gold account for this with wider stops, news filters, or rules that stay out of the market at those times.

Contract size and pip value

Most brokers quote XAUUSD with a contract of 100 troy ounces per lot and prices to two decimal places. On that specification:

• A $1.00 move is worth $100 on 1.00 lot and $1 on 0.01 lot.
• A 10-cent move, often called a pip on gold, is worth $10 per lot.
• Margin is calculated from the gold price, so it rises as gold gets more expensive.

Some brokers use 3 digits, a different contract size or a symbol such as GOLD or XAUUSD.m. An EA that hard-codes the wrong value will size trades incorrectly, so check the symbol specification in MetaTrader before you start. Our pip value calculator shows the money value of a move for your lot size.

When gold moves

Gold trades almost around the clock from Monday to Friday, but liquidity is uneven. The Asian session is usually quieter, with wider spreads at its start. Activity builds when London opens and peaks when London and New York overlap, which is also when most US data is released. Many gold EAs only trade one of these windows; others avoid the first minutes after the daily rollover, when spreads widen.

If an EA uses a time filter, remember that it reads your broker's server time, not your local clock. The forex market hours tool shows the sessions in your own time zone.

How gold EAs trade

Most gold expert advisors fall into a few families, each with a different risk profile:

• Scalpers take many short trades on M1 to M15. They depend on low spreads and fast execution, so results vary a lot between brokers.
• Trend and breakout systems enter when gold leaves a range or a session's high or low, and hold for larger moves with wider stops.
• Mean-reversion systems fade stretched moves back toward an average. They win often but need a firm stop for the day a move keeps going.
• Grid and recovery systems add positions as price moves against them. Gold's long trending days are exactly where these build their largest exposure; our grid and recovery page explains the risk.

Indicators on gold charts

Indicators for gold usually help with timing and levels rather than placing trades: session ranges, support and resistance zones, volatility bands and trend filters. Because gold respects round numbers and previous session highs and lows, level-based indicators are popular. Check that any signal indicator doesn't repaint before you rely on it; our repainting guide shows how.

Checks before running one

1. Match the symbol. Confirm the EA reads your broker's digits and contract size correctly.
2. Test on gold data. Backtest on real ticks from your broker with its typical spread, not a fixed low spread. See how to backtest an EA.
3. Size from the stop. Set lots from your risk per trade and the EA's stop loss with the position size calculator.
4. Plan for news. Decide whether the EA should trade through US data, and test both ways.
5. Run it on demo first. A few weeks of live demo trading shows the spreads and slippage your backtest can't.

Our full gold trading guide goes deeper into spreads, volatility and risk settings for XAUUSD.