How far does gold move in a day? XAU/USD's daily range

Gold's daily range, the distance from the day's low to its high, had a median of 985.8 pips, about $99 at $0.10 a pip, over the 130 trading days in our sample, from 26 March to 25 September 2026. The average day was wider, 1,051.2 pips or about $105, because a few very wide days lift an average more than they lift a median.

As a share of the price, the median day was 2.168% and the average day 2.385%. That is the figure to use when you compare gold with another market, because a pip is a different size on each, and the forex average daily range sets out the currency pairs on the same measure. The glossary entry for average daily range explains the term.

How wide a gold day got

Half of the 130 days fell between 785.1 and 1,246.2 pips. Ranked from the narrowest day to the widest:

So the busiest tenth of days covered more than two and a half times the ground of the quietest tenth: 1,603.2 pips against 616.2. As a share of price, one day in ten was below 1.436% and one in ten above 3.698%.

Monday was the quietest weekday, Wednesday the widest

The median Monday covered 854.4 pips and the median Wednesday 1,138.9, with Tuesday, Thursday and Friday in between. Each weekday has only 26 days in the sample, and the spread inside one weekday is wider than the gap between them: one Monday in ten was wider than 1,270.2 pips, more than the median Wednesday.

The release calendar was not spread evenly across the week. All four Fed decisions in the sample fell on Wednesdays, as did two of the six US inflation reports, and none of the sixteen US releases we tracked fell on a Monday. With 26 days a weekday, we would not build a rule on the difference.

The months, April to September

The median day in each month, in pips:

March is left out, because the sample holds only three of its days. The monthly medians ran from 863.7 pips in August to 1,043.8 in April. Gold's average daily close moved too, from $4,775.54 in April to $4,072.93 in July and $4,423.78 in August, and at a lower price the same percentage move covers fewer pips. Where those prices sit in gold's longer run is in gold price history since 1960.

The five widest days

None of the five was one of the sixteen US release days we tracked. The widest release day, the inflation report of 10 June, came to 1,932.9 pips, just short of the list; what gold did on NFP, CPI and Fed days has the rest. At the other end, the narrowest day, 16 June, covered 491.4 pips, the only one of the 130 under 500.

What a typical day means for a gold stop

A 500-pip stop is $50 of gold's price, about half of a median day in this sample. Gold's high and low were more than 500 pips apart on 129 of the 130 days. That does not mean a stop of that size was hit on 129 days: the range runs from the day's low to its high, and a stop is reached only if the price travels that far against your entry.

A 100-pip stop, $10, is about a tenth of a median day. It is also smaller than the median range of a single hour in 22 of gold's 23 trading hours; only 21:00 UK, just before the daily break, was quieter, at 88.2 pips. The hour-by-hour figures show where those hours fall.

The day's range does not set your risk. The stop and the lot size do: lots = money at risk ÷ (stop in pips × $10 per pip per lot).

On an example $10,000 account risking 1%, which is $100, a 500-pip stop gives 100 ÷ (500 × 10) = 0.02 lots and a 100-pip stop gives 0.10 lots. Each loses $100 at the stop. The gold lot size calculator does the sum from a signal's entry and stop.

On a day when gold is moving more than usual, the answer is a smaller size or no trade, not a stop moved further out. Our results page lists each closed signal with its entry, stop, targets and outcome, so you can set the stops we use beside the ranges on this page.

Where the numbers come from

One-minute prices: GetData free sample, MIT licence, 26 March to 25 September 2026. We grouped them into trading days of 17:00 to 17:00 New York time, the day most MT4 and MT5 daily candles use, each labelled by the date it ends. That gives 130 full trading days for gold: 26 March, cut short by the start of the sample, and Good Friday, 3 April, with 11 one-minute bars, are left out.

Hours are UK clock hours, on British Summer Time from 29 March. 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.

Typical values are medians, averages are labelled as averages, % of price is the day's range over the previous day's close, and a gold pip is $0.10 of price. The method and the same figures for other markets are on the markets page, and gold's own figures on XAU/USD.