Our desk posts gold and forex from the same process: a level, a stop behind the structure, three targets. What differs is the instrument, and gold differs in four ways that matter to a signal trader.
How gold pips are counted
There is no universal convention, so here is ours, and it is the one the results page and the copier use. One gold pip is a move of $0.10 in the price. A move from 2,410.00 to 2,411.00 is 10 pips. A 50-pip target is $5.00 of price.
Your broker may show gold to two decimals (2,410.53). The last digit is a pipette; ignore it for reading signals and sizing. Under our convention a $1.00 move is 10 pips and a $10.00 move is 100 pips. If a channel calls a $1.00 move "100 pips", it is counting in cents ($0.01 per pip), a different convention. Ask which one a channel uses before you size from its numbers, because the difference is a factor of ten.
Why gold stops are wider
Gold's daily range is regularly several times EUR/USD's in pip terms. A structure that justifies a trade on gold (a session low, a swing) sits further from price than the equivalent on a forex major, so the stop has to sit further away too. Gold stops of 60 to 150 pips are ordinary on our desk. A 30-pip gold stop is inside the noise and gets hit by it.
A wider stop is not more risk. It is more pips. Risk is set by lot size, and the position sizing guide turns any stop distance into the same money. On a $5,000 account at 1%, an 80-pip gold stop is 0.06 lots; a 25-pip EUR/USD stop is 0.20 lots. Same $50 either way. The member who trades both at 0.20 is risking $160 on gold and does not know it.
The spread and TP1
Gold spreads are wider than forex spreads in money terms and they widen sharply around news and at the open of the week. In our convention a quiet gold spread is a few pips (a raw account might show $0.10 to $0.30, a standard account more), and around a release it can be ten times that for a few minutes. That matters for TP1 specifically: your take profit fills when the bid or ask reaches it, not the mid price, so a 50-pip TP1 needs the move plus the spread. Our published record measures from the signal's entry to the target, not from your fill, so the record's TP1 hits are slightly easier than yours, and the gap is widest on the signals placed nearest to news.
Two practical answers: trade gold on the account type with the tighter spread, and remember that a wide spread eats a larger share of a small first target than of a large third one when you choose a rule in the take profit guide.
Gold's own clock
Gold does not wait for London. It moves in Asia on Chinese demand, at London open, and hardest in the New York morning when US data lands. A dollar move that ruins EUR/USD and GBP/USD levels often gives gold a clean pullback into a level we were already watching. That is why "no forex today" days usually still carry a gold signal; the article on those days explains the reasoning.
It also means gold signals can run over a weekend more often than forex ones. If you hold, know that the Monday open can gap through a stop, and the fill is where the market opens, not where the stop was.
News
Gold reacts to US inflation and jobs data, central bank decisions and anything that moves real yields, and it reacts in seconds. We do not post gold entries into the last minutes before a scheduled release. If you trade gold by hand, check the calendar before the entry; if you run the copier, set trading windows around the releases your risk rules care about.
Sizing gold, once more
The formula does not change; the inputs do. Pip value per lot on gold is $10 (one lot is 100 ounces, and a ten-cent move on 100 ounces is $10), the same as EUR/USD, but the stop is three or four times the pips. So the lot size is three or four times smaller. If that gives you 0.01 lots and the maths says you should be at 0.006, skip gold until the account is larger. A $500 account at 1% cannot trade an 80-pip gold stop; the honest sizing is smaller than the smallest lot.
What our gold record looks like
Every gold signal since 2023 is on the results page with its entry, stop, targets and outcome, and the backtester lets you filter by instrument and date and score it with the rule you would use. Run gold alone before you decide gold is where your account should go. On many months it is the best instrument on the desk; it is also the one where the stops are largest in pips, and only the sizing turns that into a fair fight.
See the signals before you pay for anything
Every closed VIP signal is on the results page with its entry, stop, targets and outcome, losses included. The free channel posts a selection each week.