What time does gold move most? Its range, UK hour by hour

Each figure here is gold's range, the high minus the low, in one UK clock hour on the weekdays of the sample, up to 131 days for each hour. The busiest hour, 14:00 to 15:00 UK, is 09:00 to 10:00 in New York. The best time to trade gold covers what the day's fixed moments mean for following signals; this page is the measured clock behind it.

The widest and the quietest hours

The two widest hours, 14:00 and 15:00 UK, sit inside the four hours when London and New York are both open. The 13:00 hour, which holds the 13:30 slot for US data, came next among the afternoon hours at 233.0 pips, and 16:00 covered 203.2.

The quietest hours were 21:00 at 88.2 pips, 23:00 at 110.1 and 05:00 at 114.8. The London morning, 08:00 to 13:00, ran at 138.1 to 156.4 pips an hour. Every hour, in pips:

A median is the middle value of all the days measured for that hour, so one wild day barely moves it. The wild days were there all the same: two of the five widest single hours in the sample were the 19:00 UK hours that held a Fed statement, 1,106.3 pips on 16 September and 1,102.1 on 17 June.

01:00 to 04:00 UK, the Asian morning

Away from the afternoon, the widest stretch is 01:00 to 04:00 UK, with medians of 178.9, 248.1 and 173.3 pips, against 127.4 at 00:00 and 135.9 at 04:00; the 06:00 hour, at 184.8, is the other early rise. The 02:00 hour was wider than every London hour except 14:00 and 15:00, and the widest single hour of the whole sample was a 02:00 hour too: 1,367.1 pips on 2 April, the sample's widest day.

On British Summer Time those three hours are 09:00 to 12:00 in Tokyo and 08:00 to 11:00 in Shanghai and Hong Kong, three cities that do not change their clocks. The Shanghai Gold Exchange lists its day trading session as starting at 9:00, which is 02:00 UK in summer time, the start of the widest of the three hours. Prices alone cannot show whether the two are connected, so we note the clock and leave it there.

From 25 October 2026 the UK is on GMT, and the same Asian clock times arrive an hour earlier on a UK clock: 9:00 in Shanghai becomes 01:00 UK. The sample has no winter days, so it cannot show whether gold's early busy hour moves with them.

Where the day's high and low were set

How many of the 130 days had their high and their low set in each block of the trading day, in UK time:

Of the 130 days, the overnight block set the high on 62 and the low on 59. It is also the longest block, nine trading hours once the break is taken out. Hour for hour, the four hours when London and New York overlap set more highs and lows than any other block: 35 highs and 33 lows.

The London morning set the day's high on only 11 days and the low on 12. On 119 of the 130 days the high came outside those five hours, and on 118 the low did. A trade opened in the London morning was, in this sample, working inside a range whose high and low were mostly set before 08:00 or after 13:00.

The daily break

Gold stops for an hour every day at 17:00 New York time, 22:00 to 23:00 UK for most of the year, which is why the chart has no bar for 22:00. The hours either side were two of the three quietest of the day: 21:00 at 88.2 pips and 23:00 at 110.1. The currency pairs trade on through that hour, and forex pairs hour by hour gives their own clock.

The quiet hours around the break are not cheap to trade. Our data is a single price with no bid and ask, and the spread at a broker widens around the break; why gold's spread jumps at night covers what that does to a stop, and gold market hours gives the break in other cities.

What the clock means for a gold trade

• Expect more movement in the afternoon. The four hours from 13:00 were the widest stretch of the day, at up to twice the median of a London morning hour.
• A trade held overnight is not resting. The 02:00 hour was wider than any London hour before 14:00.
• Size for the hours you hold through. A 200-pip stop, $20, was smaller than the median range of each of five single hours: 02:00, 13:00, 14:00, 15:00 and 16:00. The gold lot size calculator turns any stop into a lot size.
• Check the calendar. In the minutes after US data at 13:30 UK and Fed decisions at 19:00 UK, gold's range was far wider than in the same minutes on other days, across five jobs reports, six inflation reports and four Fed decisions; gold on NFP, CPI and Fed days has the figures.
• Know when signals arrive. To see where ours land on your own clock, follow the free channel for a week.

Where the numbers come from

One-minute prices: GetData free sample, MIT licence, 26 March to 25 September 2026, 130 full trading days of 17:00 to 17:00 New York time for gold. Each figure is the range of one UK clock hour on a Monday to Friday UK date, counted only when the hour has at least 50 one-minute bars, and the typical hour is the median. UK time was British Summer Time from 29 March, three days into the sample. 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.

The blocks for the day's high and low follow the trading day, so the first block opens at 22:00 the evening before. The Shanghai Gold Exchange times are from its own trading hours page, read on 24 October 2026. The method is on the markets page, and gold's other figures on XAU/USD.