The Blog
Two kinds of writing here. Guides explain what actually moves gold, in plain language and without the mysticism. News-day pages report what our strategy did on a specific release - every leg, winners and losers, taken straight from the published trade log.
Every figure on every page here is read live from that record when the page loads. No number is typed in by hand, so none of them can quietly go stale.
Guides
Why the gold spread widens on news days
The spread is not a fixed fee. What makes it widen around scheduled releases, why it hits gold harder than most, and how to see it before it costs you.
Win rate vs profit factor: why a 90% win rate can still lose money
Win rate is the most quoted number in trading and the least informative on its own. What it hides, what profit factor adds, and the two together from a real record.
How long does a gold trade actually last?
Holding time decides what a strategy feels like to own. The median, the tail, and why the average is the wrong number to quote.
Why your stop loss did not fill at your price (gold slippage)
A stop order is an instruction to leave, not a promise of a price. What slippage is, why gold does it worst around scheduled news, and what it looks like in a real record.
What drawdown really means (and why depth is the easy half)
Drawdown decides whether a strategy is survivable. What it measures, why duration hurts more than depth, and the worst one in our own record.
Backtest vs forward test: how to read a trading track record
Most published trading results are backtests - a claim about the past made after the fact. How to tell them apart, and what to check first.
What is a pip in gold (XAU/USD)? The maths, worked through
Gold pips confuse people because brokers quote them differently. The convention, what a pip is worth per lot, and how to convert a pip result into money.
FOMC and gold: what the Fed decision does to XAU/USD
Eight times a year the Fed sets rates and gold reprices. Why the press conference usually moves it more than the decision, and what our strategy did.
How CPI moves gold: the inflation print and XAU/USD
The US inflation report is the other big scheduled mover of gold. Why the reaction is less one-directional than expected, and what our strategy did.
Does NFP move gold? What the jobs report does to XAU/USD
Non-Farm Payrolls is one of the two biggest scheduled movers of gold. What it is, why XAU/USD reacts, and what our strategy has done on those days.
News days
One page per verified release the strategy actually traded. A release with no closed trade gets no page - there would be nothing on it but a date. The running summary across all of them is on the news record page.
Also in here
The blog explains why gold moves. The news record shows what it actually did, and the calculators turn any of it into money.
Nine lessons: how price moves, price action, levels, chart traps, u-turn zones, psychology and building a system you can test.
Every verified release, what the strategy did on it, and how those days compare with ordinary ones. Updates itself as releases happen.
When the automation breaks: alerts that never fire, webhooks that vanish, wrong lot sizes, a VPS that quietly stops overnight.
Size a trade from your account and risk, then apply the published record - profit AND worst drawdown - at whatever lot you pick.
When gold actually moves, how the Quarter Point levels work, the five rules that protect an account, and a 30-second pre-trade checklist. One page, no cost.
Everything here is educational information, not financial advice and not a recommendation to trade. Trading gold carries a substantial risk of loss, including all of your deposit. See the risk disclosure.