Fills are worse than expected

Gold's spread is not constant. It widens at the session gap, around scheduled releases, and in thin liquidity - and a spread that is fine on average can be several times wider at exactly the moment an order goes in.

You are charted on the bid and stopped on the ask

Most charts plot one side of the market while your stop is evaluated against the other. The gap between them is the spread, and it means a stop can be hit while the line on your chart was never touched. Nothing is broken when this happens - it is how every broker works.

Account type matters more than anything else here

A standard account bakes its cost into a wider spread; a raw or ECN account shows a tighter spread and charges commission separately. For a strategy that trades often, the difference compounds into a materially different result on identical signals.

Scheduled news is a different animal

Around major releases, spread widens and fills land further from the requested price. We publish what actually happened on every verified release we traded - see what gold does on news days - rather than describing it in the abstract.

When to worry

Occasional slippage is normal and cuts both ways. Persistent one-directional slippage on every order is worth raising with your broker, and worth comparing against a second account before concluding anything.