Gold and the US dollar: how XAU/USD moved with the majors

Of the seven other markets in our price files, silver moved most closely with gold, at +0.80, over the 129 daily changes between the 130 trading days present in all eight files, from 26 March to 25 September 2026. Among the currency pairs, gold moved most with EUR/USD, at +0.59, and most against USD/CHF, at -0.63.

The dollar sits in every quote

Gold's correlation with each market, on 129 daily changes and on 3,004 hourly changes:

The signs line up with where the dollar sits in each quote. Gold is quoted as XAU/USD, dollars per ounce, with the dollar second, as in EUR/USD, GBP/USD and AUD/USD, and gold's correlations with all three were positive. In USD/JPY, USD/CAD and USD/CHF the dollar comes first, so a weaker dollar pulls those quotes down, and gold's correlations with them were negative.

That pattern fits a dollar side common to all of these quotes. A correlation cannot say how much of any day's move in gold came from the dollar and how much from gold itself. The glossary has a short entry on correlation.

What +0.59 and -0.63 mean

A correlation runs from -1 to +1. At +1, every daily change in gold would have come with a change in EUR/USD in the same direction and in proportion. At 0 there would be no straight-line link at all, and at -1 the exact mirror image.

So +0.59 means a clear tendency for gold and EUR/USD to move the same way, though not on every day. The -0.63 with USD/CHF means a slightly stronger tendency to move in opposite directions. Neither number says anything about size: +0.59 does not mean that EUR/USD moved 59% as far as gold.

The timeframe matters too. Across 3,004 hourly changes, the correlations were close to the daily ones and mostly a little weaker: EUR/USD +0.55, USD/CHF -0.51, and USD/JPY -0.29 against -0.38 on daily changes. Both sets describe one six-month window, and correlations between markets drift over time; the forex correlation table has the same measure for every pair.

Two signals can be one bet

Say a gold buy and a EUR/USD buy are open at the same time, each sized to risk 1% of the account. With a correlation of +0.59 they have tended to go the same way, so a day that goes against one of them has tended to go against the other. Treat the pair as closer to one 2% position on the dollar than two separate 1% trades.

The same goes for a gold buy alongside a USD/CHF sell, and more so for gold and silver: a gold buy and a silver buy, at +0.80, are close to the same trade twice. EUR/USD and USD/CHF themselves were at -0.71 over these days, so a gold buy, a EUR/USD buy and a USD/CHF sell are three versions of one view.

A gold buy and a EUR/USD sell lean opposite ways and partly offset each other, but at +0.59 the offset is loose, and it can weaken in another period. If you follow signals on several markets, add up the risk on positions that lean the same way and keep the total inside the limit you set. How much to risk per trade covers choosing that limit, and the lot size calculator sizes each trade from its stop. Gold and forex signals have separate filters on our results page, so you can look at each record on its own.

Where the numbers come from

Correlations are Pearson coefficients on the log change from one daily close to the next, using the last close of each trading day (16:44 New York on Fridays, when the metal files stop) on the 130 trading days present in all eight markets, which give 129 daily changes; the hourly figures use 3,004 changes between hourly closes. Each figure is one measure for the whole window, not a median or an average of shorter windows. The first minute after each weekend, daily break or other pause of more than five minutes is left out of highs and lows, because its opening price is carried over from before the pause; closes, which these correlations use, are not affected.

One-minute prices: GetData free sample, MIT licence, 26 March to 25 September 2026, which gives 130 full trading days of 17:00 to 17:00 New York time for gold, with UK times on British Summer Time from 29 March. The method is on the markets page, and the market pages for XAU/USD, EUR/USD and USD/CHF carry their own figures.