Gold Trading Hours: When XAUUSD Is Open and When It Moves

Gold is the one market that forex traders trade which is not a currency, and its hours follow the futures exchange in New York rather than the forex sessions. The result is a market open about 23 hours a day with a daily break, a weekend shutdown, and two or three windows each day when nearly all of the range is made. All times below are UK time unless stated, and because the schedule is set in New York, they move by an hour for the few weeks each spring and autumn when the US and UK clock changes do not line up.

Gold trading hours in UK time

Spot gold (XAUUSD) on a CFD or spread betting platform follows the electronic session of COMEX gold futures, which run on CME Globex. The weekly schedule looks like this:

The daily break is the CME maintenance window, and it is why your broker's gold chart has a one-hour gap every evening. Some brokers close a few minutes earlier or reopen a few minutes later than the exchange, so check the contract specification on your own platform.

During US daylight saving time (mid-March to early November) and UK summer time (late March to late October) the two clocks are both forward and the UK times above hold. For the two or three weeks each year when one has changed and the other has not, every New York-based time in the table shifts one hour earlier or later in the UK. The forex market hours tool handles that for you in your own timezone.

Why gold has a daily break and forex does not

Forex has no central exchange. Trading passes from Sydney to Tokyo to London to New York without a formal close, which is why EUR/USD runs from Sunday evening to Friday evening with no gap. Gold is different. The reference price for XAUUSD comes from COMEX futures, which trade on a single electronic system that pauses for an hour each day. Your CFD provider hedges in that market, so when it is shut, the CFD price is too.

The pit session (open outcry hours, roughly 1:20pm to 6:30pm UK) no longer matters for execution, since nearly all volume is electronic, but the old floor hours still mark the window of heaviest US participation. The daily settlement price is set at 6:30pm UK, which is why volume often picks up into that time.

The London fixes

Twice a day the LBMA gold price is set in an electronic auction run from London, at 10:30am and 3pm UK time. These are the benchmark prices used by central banks, refiners, jewellers and funds to settle physical gold contracts. In the minutes before each fix, dealers hedge the orders they need to fill at the auction price, and spot gold can move sharply.

The PM fix at 3pm is the bigger of the two, because it coincides with the first hours of New York. If you trade gold intraday, treat 10:25am to 10:35am and 2:55pm to 3:05pm as news windows: spreads widen, moves are fast, and stops sitting just beyond a level are vulnerable. Longer-term traders can ignore them.

When gold actually moves

Spread the day into sessions and gold's volatility is lopsided.

Asian session (11pm to 8am UK). Usually the quietest stretch. Tokyo and Singapore are active in physical gold, and the Shanghai Gold Exchange opens at 1:30am UK, which can produce a move when Chinese demand is in the news. Most nights, though, gold drifts in a $5 to $10 range. It is a time for marking levels, not for chasing.

London session (8am to 1pm UK). Volume arrives with the London open and the market often picks a direction for the European morning in the first hour. The AM fix at 10:30am adds a burst. Many of the breakouts from the Asian range happen between 8am and 9am.

London-New York overlap (1pm to 5pm UK). The main event. US economic data lands at 1:30pm (payrolls, CPI, retail sales, GDP), New York desks are at full strength, and the PM fix comes at 3pm. On a typical day more than half of gold's range is made in these four hours. The sessions article covers the same window for currencies.

Late New York (5pm to 10pm UK). Volume fades after the London close. Gold can trend quietly or chop, and moves in this window are often reversed the following morning. The exceptions are FOMC days, when the 7pm decision and the 7:30pm press conference can produce the whole week's range in an hour.

Gold and the US calendar

Gold is priced in dollars and competes with US Treasury bonds for safe-haven money, so the US calendar matters more to it than to any currency pair except the dollar itself. The three events that move it most are the monthly jobs report (first Friday, 1:30pm UK), CPI inflation (mid-month, 1:30pm UK) and the Federal Reserve decision (7pm UK). A surprise in any of them can move gold $30 or more in minutes.

Check the economic calendar before holding a gold position into the New York morning. A $15 stop that looks sensible against a $25 daily ATR can be taken out by the first tick of a payrolls print.

Sizing for the hours you trade

Because gold's range is concentrated, the same position carries different risk at different times of day. A one-lot XAUUSD position is 100 ounces, so every $1 move is $100. A quiet Asian drift of $8 is $800; a payrolls spike of $30 is $3,000. If you size a trade at 11pm for the overnight range and still hold it at 1:30pm the next day, the risk has roughly tripled without you changing anything.

The practical answer is to set the stop to the volatility of the window you will be in, and let that set the size. The gold lot size calculator takes the current gold price and daily ATR and gives you the lots for a fixed percentage of the account. The gold trading strategy guide goes through the setups that suit each session.

Public holidays

Gold keeps trading on UK bank holidays, since the market is run from Chicago and New York, but it goes quiet on US holidays. On days such as Thanksgiving, Independence Day and Martin Luther King Day the electronic session usually closes early (around 6pm UK) and reopens at the normal time that evening. Christmas Day and New Year's Day are full closures. Volume on the days either side is thin, and thin gold is not a market to trade size in.

A one-line summary

Gold is open from Sunday 11pm to Friday 10pm UK time with an hour's break each evening, and most of its daily movement happens between 8am and 5pm UK, with the sharpest moves at 1:30pm and around the 3pm London fix. Trade inside those windows, know what the calendar holds, and size to the volatility of the hour you are in.