Learn to trade gold
Free guides for beginners, a trading glossary, and an interactive Academy where you practise on charts.
What is XAU/USD? A beginner's guide to trading gold
What XAU/USD means, why gold moves, and how a gold trade works.
Best time to trade gold: sessions and news times
Which hours gold moves most, and the news releases to watch.
How prop firm challenges work (2-step explained)
Targets, loss limits, phases and what to watch before you pay for a challenge.
Stop loss and position size: how to risk 1% on a gold trade
How to choose a stop and turn your risk into a lot size.
What is a stop hunt (liquidity sweep) and how to trade it
Why price spikes through obvious levels and snaps back.
Support and resistance explained with gold examples
How to draw levels that matter, and what happens when they break.
Supply and demand zones: how to find and trade them
A tight base, an explosive exit, and how to wait for the return.
Moving averages: how to read a trend and find pullback entries
What a moving average is and the pullback entry in an uptrend.
How to keep a trading journal that actually improves your results
What to record, and how to review it each week.
Risk to reward and win rate: why you can lose more than you win and still profit
Expectancy explained with simple numbers.
Daily loss limit and trailing drawdown: how prop firms count losses
How the daily and max loss limits are measured and how to stay safe.
5 trading psychology mistakes that blow up accounts
Revenge trading, moving stops and four more habits to fix.
Trading glossary
- Ask / Bid
- The price you buy at (ask) and sell at (bid). The difference is the spread.
- ATR
- Average True Range: the average size of recent candles, used to measure volatility and place stops.
- Balance / Equity
- Balance is your closed-trade total; equity also includes open profit and loss.
- Break of structure (BOS)
- A close beyond the last swing that shows a trend may be changing.
- CFD
- Contract for difference: you trade the price change without owning the asset.
- Demand zone
- An area where buyers were strong, shown by a base followed by a fast move up.
- Drawdown
- The fall from a peak in your account value.
- EA (expert advisor)
- A robot that trades automatically on MetaTrader.
- Expectancy
- The average result per trade in R: win rate x average win - loss rate x average loss.
- Fair value gap (FVG)
- A gap between candles where price moved fast and may return to fill it.
- Higher high / higher low
- Each swing above the previous one: the pattern of an uptrend.
- Leverage
- Trading a bigger position than your cash, which magnifies profits and losses.
- Liquidity sweep
- A spike through an obvious high or low that triggers stops and then reverses.
- Lot
- A trade size unit. 1 standard gold lot is usually 100 ounces.
- Margin
- The money your broker holds while a leveraged trade is open.
- Max loss limit
- A prop firm rule for the largest total loss allowed, fixed or trailing.
- Pip / point
- The smallest usual price step. In gold, a 1 dollar move is 100 points on many brokers.
- Pullback
- A short move against the trend before it continues.
- R (risk unit)
- The amount you risk on a trade. A 2R win earns twice what you risked.
- Range
- Price moving sideways between two levels.
- Resistance
- A price area where sellers have stopped price before.
- Risk to reward
- The size of your target compared with your stop, such as 1:2.
- Slippage
- The difference between the price you expected and the price you got.
- Spread
- The cost built into the price: the gap between bid and ask.
- Stop loss
- An order that closes a trade at a set loss.
- Supply zone
- An area where sellers were strong, shown by a base followed by a fast move down.
- Support
- A price area where buyers have stopped price before.
- Swing high / low
- A peak or a trough in price with lower or higher prices on both sides.
- Take profit
- An order that closes a trade at a set profit.
- Trailing drawdown
- A loss limit that moves up as your account balance reaches new highs.
Education only. Not financial advice. Trading involves a high risk of loss.