One standard lot of XAUUSD is 100 troy ounces, so every $1 move in the gold price is $100 of profit or loss per lot. That single fact decides most of what follows. Gold can travel $20 or more in an ordinary session and far more on a news day, which means a one-lot position can swing by thousands of dollars before the London close.
On a $100K Edge 1 Step account the Daily Loss Limit is 4%, which is $4,000. Two lots of gold and a $20 move against you is the whole day's allowance gone in one trade. That arithmetic, not bad analysis, is why gold catches out so many traders who size it like a currency pair.
This post works through the dollar maths per lot, the $6 metals commission and a sizing method that keeps a gold position inside the daily limit with room to spare. The figures are for a $100K Edge 1 Step; the method is the same on every CFD plan, using that plan's own limit.
What one lot of gold is worth per pip
Gold is quoted in US dollars per troy ounce to two decimal places. On MetaTrader 5 the smallest price step is 0.01 and one lot is 100 ounces, so the sums are short.
- A 0.01 move, one point, is $1 per lot.
- A 0.10 move, which most traders call a pip on gold, is $10 per lot.
- A $1.00 move is $100 per lot.
- A $10 move is $1,000 per lot.
Scale that by the position. At 0.10 lots a $10 move is $100; at 0.50 lots it is $500; at 2 lots it is $2,000. None of this depends on leverage. Leverage decides how much margin a position ties up, not how much it can lose.
Compare it with forex. One lot of EURUSD is $10 per pip, and a busy day on EURUSD might be 80 pips, so a one-lot day is a few hundred dollars either way. One lot of gold on a $30 day is $3,000. A trader who moves from EURUSD to XAUUSD and keeps the same lot sizes has multiplied the risk by roughly ten without changing anything on the screen.
Why gold is so hard on an evaluation
Several things stack up on gold in a way they do not on most pairs.
- The dollar value per lot is large, and the habit of trading in round lots carries over from forex.
- The range is wide and uneven. Gold can sit still for hours and then move $15 in a few minutes around a US data release or a headline.
- Spreads widen at exactly those moments, so a stop placed close to the price is filled further away than planned.
- It trades almost around the clock. A position left open overnight meets the Asian session and the London open before you are back at the screen.
Put together, a gold position reaches a loss limit faster than the trader expects. The Daily Loss Limit on CFD plans is hard, so one bad gold day can end the account outright; the Maximum Loss Limit is the second ceiling that a few red days in a row can reach. The piece on how evaluations are actually lost describes the usual shape: one oversized loss, then a larger position to win it back inside the same session.
The daily limit on a $100K account
The limits differ by plan, so take the ones printed on your account card. On a $100K account they are:
- Edge 1 Step: Daily Loss Limit 4% ($4,000), Maximum Loss Limit 7.5% ($7,500), static.
- Edge 2 Step: Daily Loss Limit 4.5% ($4,500), Maximum Loss Limit 9% ($9,000), static.
- Instant Pro: Daily Loss Limit 3.5% ($3,500), Maximum Loss Limit 7% ($7,000), plus a Max Floating Loss per Symbol of 1.5% ($1,500).
- Instant Go: Daily Loss Limit 3% ($3,000), Maximum Loss Limit 6% ($6,000), plus the same 1.5% floating-loss rule.
For gold the daily limit is the one that binds, because gold can use up a day's allowance in a single trade. The approach that works is the one in the daily loss limit, and the hour it resets: treat the number as a budget, not a boundary, and plan to spend no more than half of it on any one day.
Sizing XAUUSD against a 4% daily limit: worked examples
The method has three steps. Decide the dollars you will risk on the trade. Decide where the stop goes, in dollars of gold price. Divide one by the other, remembering that each $1 of stop is $100 per lot.
Lots = dollars at risk divided by (stop in dollars multiplied by 100).
On a $100K Edge 1 Step with a $4,000 Daily Loss Limit:
- Risk $1,000 (1% of the account) with a $10 stop: 1,000 divided by 1,000 is 1.00 lot.
- Risk $1,000 with a $20 stop: 0.50 lots.
- Risk $500 (0.5%) with a $10 stop: 0.50 lots.
- Risk $500 with a $5 stop: 1.00 lot, but a $5 stop sits inside the noise for most of the day, so expect to be taken out often.
- Risk $2,000, half the daily limit, with a $20 stop: 1.00 lot. One loss and the day's budget is half spent.
At 1% per trade it takes four full losses to reach the $4,000 daily limit and eight to reach the $7,500 Maximum Loss Limit with nothing won in between. At 2% per trade those numbers halve. The sizing itself does not protect you; the number of consecutive losses you allow yourself before stopping does, and that number is decided before the session or not at all.
The general version of this method, for any symbol and any limit, is in position sizing against a loss limit, not a feeling.
The $6 per lot metals commission
Metals carry a commission of $6 per lot, round turn, on Edge and Instant accounts, and $5 on Prime. It is charged half when the position opens and half when it closes, so a one-lot gold trade shows $3 on the way in and $3 on the way out. Indices and stocks are commission free; forex is $5 per lot and energies $6.
Against a $1,000 risk on one lot, $6 is 0.6% of the risk and hardly matters. It starts to matter when trades are small and tight. At 0.10 lots with a $1 stop the risk is $10 and the commission is $0.60, which is 6% of the risk before the spread is counted. A scalping method on gold has to clear commission and spread on every trade, and that cost is the same whether the trade wins or loses. It comes off the account like any other cost.
Exposure and the floating-loss rule on Instant plans
Two more rules touch gold specifically. The first is Max Exposure, which on a $100K Edge account is $1,250,000 of open notional. With gold in the thousands of dollars an ounce, one lot is several hundred thousand dollars of notional, so four or five lots open at once already sits near the cap. A first breach is a warning: if the account is in profit, the profit is reset to the starting balance. A second breach closes the account.
The second applies to Instant Pro and Instant Go only. All open positions on one symbol together may not float below 1.5% of the starting balance. On $100K that is $1,500: a notice at $1,000 and a formal warning at $1,500. One lot of gold $15 underwater is a warning, before the daily limit is anywhere near. Instant traders should size gold against that $1,500 rather than against the daily limit, which in practice means 0.50 lots or less with a $10 stop. The full wording of both rules is in the trading rules.
Overnight gold and the Friday close
Overnight holding is allowed on every CFD plan, and a gold trade carried from Tuesday to Thursday is fine. Positions held past 5 PM New York pay the symbol's normal swap, triple on Wednesday, unless the account has the Swap-Free add-on. Without the Weekend Holding add-on, anything still open at 4:45 PM New York on Friday is closed by the system, and that first forced close counts as a warning, the second closes the account. Gold is one of the symbols people most often forget on a Friday afternoon, so set an alarm or buy the add-on.
The trader who loses an evaluation on gold rarely read the price wrong. They read the lot size wrong, usually by a factor of ten.
Questions traders ask
How much is one pip on XAUUSD? On a standard lot a 0.10 move is $10 and a $1.00 move is $100. On 0.10 lots those become $1 and $10. The pip is defined differently by different brokers, so work in dollars of gold price and you cannot be caught out.
What lot size should I use for gold on a $100K account? With a $4,000 Daily Loss Limit and a plan to risk 1% per trade, one lot with a $10 stop or half a lot with a $20 stop. On Instant Pro or Instant Go, size against the $1,500 floating-loss rule instead and go smaller.
Is gold commission free on a funded account? No. Metals are $6 per lot round turn on Edge and Instant, $5 on Prime, charged half on the open and half on the close. Indices and stocks are the commission-free markets.