Free tool
Gold Position Size Calculator (XAUUSD)
Decide your risk first, place your stop where the idea is invalid, and let the lot size fall out of the maths. This calculator sizes XAUUSD positions on a standard 100 ounce contract and rounds down so you are never over budget.
Your parameters
Professional desks typically cap this at 0.5%–1%.
400 pips = a $4.00 move in the Gold price.
2R means the take profit is twice the stop distance.
Trade this size
Assumes a standard 100 ounce XAUUSD contract quoted to two decimals and a USD-denominated pip value. Spread, commission, swap and slippage are excluded.
The formula
Lots = (balance × risk%) ÷ (stop in pips × pip value per lot). On XAUUSD the pip value per standard lot is $1.00, which makes the arithmetic unusually clean: a $50 risk budget with a 400 pip stop gives 0.125 lots. Always round down to the broker's lot step — rounding up quietly pushes you over your own limit on every trade you take.
Why sizing beats entries
Two traders can take the identical setup and end the year in completely different places. The one who risks a fixed fraction survives a run of six losses at −6R and is still trading with 94% of capital. The one who sizes by feel takes the same six losses at wildly different sizes, blows through a drawdown limit, and starts revenge trading. Consistency of risk — not accuracy — is what makes an edge compound.
Adjusting for Gold volatility
XAUUSD is not a fixed-volatility instrument. Range expands sharply around US CPI, FOMC statements and Non-Farm Payrolls, and thins out in the Asian session. Rather than keeping a fixed pip stop, size the stop from structure or an ATR multiple, then let this calculator shrink the lots. On news days many Gold traders halve the risk percentage instead of tightening the stop — a tight stop in a volatile tape is simply a slower way of donating.
Thinking in R
Once risk is fixed, every outcome can be expressed in R: one unit of risk. A +2R winner is twice what a full stop-out costs, regardless of account size. That is how we publish every setup and log every result on the GOLD Scalper performance page, so results stay comparable whether you trade a $500 account or a funded $200,000 one.
Position sizing FAQ
Membership
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Gold and XAUUSD setups with defined entries, stops and targets, plus the daily Gold outlook and a performance log that includes losing trades.