The first part of this post describes the basics of my trading. The 10th March 2026 describes the firm conclusions I have come to.
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I am developing a manual trading system that is looking good on demo. I started on 22nd of September 2025 with a $2,000 deposit. The balance at the time of writing this is $9,686 and the equity at $10,134 – one open order just a few pips away from TP.
Trading pair: XAUUSD (gold/usd)
Time frame: 1 hour.
My initial idea was this:
- Wai for the latest swing to occur and draw a horizontal line at the high and low..
- Once the swing was complete, wait for a retrace to the middle of the swing.
- Once the market reached roughly the mid point of the previous swing, set stop orders a few pips above and below the high and low lines marking the previous swing.
- Sit back and watch.
(edit 12th May 2026: in fact, this looks much more lake the range trading that I have come to enjoy and describe further down this post)
look along the chart and you can see a number of swings that I could have marked off.
The first refinement came for two reasons:
- The buy stop would fill. XAUUSD is highly volatile so the market would often retrace far enough to fill the sell stop. Then it would rise again until hitting the buy TP and leave me wondering what to do with the outstanding sell.
- I remembered the oft-stated fact that money flows towards gold in times of international uncertainty - and they could hardly be more uncertain than at the moment. Also I saw using CSS that USD has been weak for ages. The pair has been rising inexorably for ages and shows no sign of starting to decline.
The second refinement came when I noticed that the market did not always retrace back to the centre of the swing but went into a range instead. Bearing in mind the constant rise of the pair, I started to set a buy stop a few pips above the high o the range. Here is an example:
The market can range for anything for a few hours to a few days but always breaks out dramatically, eventually, in recent months at least.
Strong movements often occur during the Asian session when I am fast asleep, so I coded the attached Straddle EA to monitor the market and place the stop order at the appropriate time.
The ea draws two yellow lines a number of pips above and below the current price and a box in the middle of the hilo. I then adjust the lines so they represent the hilo. The box obediently follows along with the movement. It adjusts to hilo lines if the market subsequently moves outside the hilo. Here is a pic from my current chart:
The high line was originally just above the range but the ea has pushed it ever higher as the market rose.
A characteristic of the pair is that it often ranges during mid week then explodes on Friday. You can see this happening on the current chart. The two dotted white lines mark the two trades last week. The first one filled on Monday then the market ranged around until Friday, driving me-nuts. You can see how it exploded on Friday, taking Monday's trade to TP then a fresh one to within hailing distance of TP. Live, I would have closed down so I could be 'flat' for the weekend. I leave such orders in place on demo.
You can also see how far down the market went after filling the Monday buy stop – the two lowest tails might not be easily visible in the pic, so load up a chart and see for yourself. We just have to be patient when this happens. I do not trade with a stop loss; it would be triggered so often that a SL would kill the trading.
I have reserved post 2 so I can write explanations of any of the inputs that members ask about. I have released the ea with my settings coded as defaults, so feel free to load it up without bothering about them.
XAUUSD charts can be confusing as there appears to be no difference in appearance to those of the standard forex pairs charts. Also, profits accrue much more quickly than is normal. I queried CoPilot about this and the difference I the scale of XAUUSD charts. I have copied the explanation into the attached pdf document. Do read it as it explains everything.
That's it for now. I will edit this post if I have forgotten anything. Have fun.
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Edit 12th May 2026
I have come to some firm conclusions since I last posted in march:
- It is best to trade after the market has been ranging for a few hours. Look for a long move in one direction followed by a consolidation where the market goes sideways for a while.
- Send both long and short stop orders.
- Delete the opposite direction stop order if one side fills and proceeds to take profit.
- When trading the latest swing, avoid huge swings. By the time one of the stop orders fills the market has already traveled a long way from the centre and the move is about to falter and possible reverse altogether.
- The 'sweet spot' for the take profit looks like 200 pips. Time and again I see the market progress that far from the order fill price and then reverse.
- Try to avoid having a market trade open over the weekend. The market tends to open after the weekend with a large gap - great when that is in the direction of the open order but a bit of a pain otherwise.
