When is gold most volatile? Gold volatility by hour (GMT) and day of the week, with 2026 data

Gold (XAU/USD) trades almost 24 hours a day, but it doesn’t move the same amount at every hour. With data from August to October 2026, the median one-hour candle measured $8.10 at 20:00 GMT (4:00 p.m. in New York) and $26.25 at 13:00 GMT (9:00 a.m. ET): more than three times as much. The busiest hours were from 12:00 to 15:00 GMT, with the US data out and London and New York both open, and 01:00 GMT, with the Shanghai open. The quietest were those around the daily break, when the spread also costs more. And the news calendar mattered more than the day of the week. These are summer times: from early November to mid-March, the European and US hours fall an hour later in GMT, while Shanghai stays at 01:00.

How to measure how much gold moves: candle range and ATR

Volatility is how much the price moves over a given time, up or down (why gold moves so much is covered in how to trade XAUUSD). The simplest way to measure it is each candle’s range, its high minus its low: if gold touches $4,012 and $3,996 within an hour, that one-hour (H1) candle measures $16. The ATR (Average True Range), which many traders use to place their stop, averages the last few candles, usually 14, and also counts the gaps between one candle’s close and the next one’s open (where to put your stop loss). Here we group the candles by their start time and compare their ranges.

The data are Dukascopy’s public prices (one-minute candles of the bid, the price you sell at, and of the ask, the price you buy at, for the spread) from August 3 to October 30, 2026: 65 trading days and 1,493 one-hour candles, the same period as in the best timeframe to trade gold. For each hour we give the median: half the candles measured less and half measured more, so a single news day doesn’t skew the figure. For the whole day, the median candle was $14.64 (the median H1 ATR(14), which includes those gaps, was $16.33: it comes out higher mainly because it’s an average and a few very big candles pull it up; the gaps add barely $0.03).

In GMT, with New York time alongside

Times are GMT (UTC), the start time of each candle. New York was on daylight time (UTC−4) for the whole period, so the New York (ET) column holds for every candle. London was on British Summer Time (GMT+1) until October 25: in the last week of October it had already put its clocks back while New York hadn’t, so the London open came at 08:00 GMT instead of 07:00. It’s one of the thirteen weeks in the period: without it, no hourly median moves by more than $1.01 and the four busiest hours stay the same.

And in winter. Almost all the candles are from the summer schedule. From early November to mid-March, everything that follows the New York or London clock (the US data, the London–New York overlap, the New York open and the daily break) happens an hour later in GMT, at the same New York time: the busiest stretch moves from 12:00–15:00 to 13:00–16:00 GMT, and the daily break starts at 22:00 GMT instead of 21:00. What Asia sets stays put, because China and Japan don’t change their clocks: the Shanghai Gold Exchange’s day session still opens at 01:00 GMT, which in New York becomes 8:00 p.m. instead of 9:00 p.m. ET. For your own city, use the time zone tables in our gold trading hours guide.

Gold volatility hour by hour: the data

This is the median candle for each hour of the day, Monday to Friday, with New York time alongside, and the median spread (the gap between the buy and sell prices) in that hour. Highlighted in bright gold, the four busiest hours:

Start time of each candle in GMT (UTC): “13:00” is the 13:00–13:59 candle. ET is New York time during the period (daylight time, UTC−4). From 21:00 to 22:00 GMT gold was in its daily break, with no prices. These are summer times: in winter, what follows Europe and the US happens an hour later in GMT, while what Asia sets, like the 01:00 GMT Shanghai open, stays put.

How to read it: at 13:00 GMT (9:00 a.m. ET), half the candles moved more than $26.25 from high to low, with a spread of $0.57 per ounce; at 20:00 GMT (4:00 p.m. ET), the median candle was just $8.10, with a $0.64 spread.

The most volatile hours for gold in GMT, and why

The four busiest hours were 13:00 GMT ($26.25), 14:00 GMT ($23.30), 01:00 GMT ($22.43) and 12:00 GMT ($21.91):

• 12:00 GMT, the US data. At 12:30 GMT (8:30 a.m. ET) the jobs report (NFP), CPI and other US data usually come out (the news that moves gold most), and the London–New York overlap begins, running from 12:00 to 16:00 GMT.
• 13:00 GMT, New York in full swing. The New York Stock Exchange opens at 13:30 GMT (9:30 a.m. ET), and the market is still digesting the data. It was the busiest hour in each of the three months.
• 14:00 GMT, London and New York still together. London holds the afternoon LBMA Gold Price auction, the benchmark price for gold, at 15:00 London time, 14:00 GMT in summer (gold’s trading sessions). From 15:00 GMT, activity drops off.
• 01:00 GMT, the Shanghai open. At 9:00 a.m. in China (01:00 GMT all year; 9:00 p.m. ET in summer and 8:00 p.m. in winter), the Shanghai Gold Exchange’s day session begins, according to its website. It was among the five busiest hours every month, and from 00:00 to 03:00 GMT gold moved more than at any hour of the European morning (06:00 to 12:00 GMT).

It isn’t just the news: without the eight jobs, inflation and Fed days, the 13:00 GMT median candle still measured $24.74 and the 12:00 GMT one $21.19. The London open, at 07:00 GMT in summer (8:00 in London), made less of a mark than is often said: from 06:00 to 09:00 GMT, the candles measured $13.65 to $14.60, close to the day’s median. And the 05:00 GMT candle ($18.51) also stood out, without such a clear explanation.

The quietest hours: around the daily break

At the other end are 20:00 GMT ($8.10), the last hour before the break, and 22:00 and 23:00 GMT ($10.42 and $10.54), the first after the reopen: London closed hours earlier, New York is wrapping up its day and Asia is only just starting (more on the hours with thin liquidity). Just as quiet was the 04:00 GMT candle ($10.40, even a touch below 22:00), before Europe gets going; almost as quiet, 10:00 GMT ($11.42); and from 16:00 GMT until the break, every hour stayed below the day’s median.

Taken together, the Asian session (22:00 to 07:00 GMT) moved a little less, with a median candle of $14.43, than London’s (07:00 to 16:00 GMT, $15.96) and New York’s (12:00 to 21:00 GMT, $16.07), as our guide to gold’s sessions suggests, but not at every hour.

Gold’s spread by hour: when trading costs the most

In Dukascopy’s data, the median spread was $0.56 to $0.58 per ounce from 07:00 to 20:00 GMT and $0.73 to $0.79 from 22:00 to 06:00 GMT. The most expensive moment was the reopen, right after the daily break in which the server’s day usually rolls over and swaps are applied: in its first five minutes, a median of $0.91, and one time in ten, $1.49 or more (when the spread widens).

What counts is how much it weighs against the move. At 13:00 GMT, the spread was 2.2% of the median candle; at 20:00 GMT, 7.9%, and at 22:00 GMT, 7.6%. In proportion, the same trade costs more than three times as much around the break as in the busiest hours.

Your broker’s spread will be different (on a raw account, quite a bit lower), but the pattern tends to repeat: check it by watching gold’s bid and ask in MT5’s Market Watch at the hours you trade.

Which day of the week gold moves most

This is the median range of each weekday and its median one-hour candle. Each day runs from the reopen the evening before to the daily break (6:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. ET), as on many MT5 servers, so Monday includes Sunday evening:

How to read it: on a typical Monday, gold moved $62.45 between the day’s high and low; on a typical Friday, $100.81. The last column is that day’s median one-hour candle.

Monday was the quietest, and Friday and Wednesday the busiest. But that’s 13 days of each, and a few days weigh a lot: four of the thirteen Fridays had jobs or CPI data, and without them Friday drops to $77.01, in line with Tuesday and Thursday. Wednesday, on the other hand, stayed high without its four CPI and Fed days ($94.97), and with so few days we can’t tell whether that’s chance. And the median one-hour candle barely changed from one day to the next ($13.58 to $15.93): big days are made by a few hours.

What about Monday and Friday? Monday’s Asian hours, when the market digests the weekend, were busier than on other days (a median candle of $15.65 from 22:00 to 07:00 GMT, against $14.05). Late on Friday, from 18:00 to 21:00 GMT, gold moved less than from Monday to Thursday ($10.85 against $12.07), with a slightly wider spread. Even so, as we explain in gold trading hours, no day is reliably better: check what’s on the calendar that week.

News days versus normal days

According to the official calendars of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and the Federal Reserve, the period had eight days with major releases: the jobs report on August 7, September 4 and October 2; CPI on August 12, September 11 and October 14; and the Fed decisions on September 16 and October 28.

• The whole day. A median range of $105.56, against $78.64 on the other 57 days: 34% more.
• The release hour. On the six jobs and CPI days, the 12:00 GMT candle (8:00 to 9:00 a.m. ET, with the data out at 8:30) measured a median $70.80, against $21.19 at that hour on the other days: more than three times as much. The biggest, on September 4: $101.48.
• The Fed. The candle with the statement (18:00 GMT, 2:00 p.m. ET, on both September 16 and October 28) measured $109.76 and $42.85, against a median of $12.43 at that hour on the other days.

From early November to mid-March, both come an hour later in GMT: the data at 13:30 and the Fed at 19:00. And not every one explodes: on October 28, a Fed day, gold moved $57.70 all day, below the median. The price reacts to the surprise against expectations, not to the event itself (how to read the calendar). And in those minutes the spread widens and orders fill at worse prices (what happens to your orders when the news hits).

What it means for your stop, lot size and costs

Stop and lot size. A stop designed for 20:00 GMT sits inside the noise of 13:00 GMT. An example to do the math, not a recommendation: a $5,000 account, $50 at risk, a stop at 1.5 times the hour’s median candle and a 100-ounce contract (check it in your broker’s Specification window). At 20:00 GMT the stop goes $12.15 away and 0.04 lots fit; at 13:00 GMT, $39.38 away, and only 0.01 fits, the usual minimum lot (the lot size formula). With the same stop at every hour, it would be hit far more often in the busy hours. And an ATR-based stop doesn’t fix that on its own: the H1 ATR(14) averages the previous 14 hours, so it lags and follows busy or quiet weeks more than the time of day (in this data, at the open of the 20:00 GMT candle it read a median of $17.26, more than at the open of the 13:00 GMT candle, $16.10).

Your hours. If you trade by hand, the right hour is one you can follow with a cool head. The busiest stretch, the London–New York overlap, runs from 8:00 a.m. to noon in New York and from 13:00 to 17:00 in London almost all year, but in Johannesburg and India it moves with the US clocks (in winter, 15:00–19:00 and 18:30–22:30): find your city in the time zone tables. Trading only from 4:00 to 8:00 p.m. ET means trading the quietest, most expensive hours, with the break in the middle. A robot left on all day doesn’t depend on your schedule, but switching it off for some hours by hand turns it into a different system that nobody has measured (automated vs manual trading).

The figures change. These were three volatile months, with gold between $3,870 and $4,697. The order of the hours was similar from one month to the next, but not their size: the 13:00 GMT median candle went from $31.45 in August to $22.36 in October. Measure again from time to time.

Gold’s hours with a trading robot: the AUREUM case

AUREUM trades XAU/USD on the 1-hour chart and decides on its own when to enter. According to its guide, once it’s on the MetaTrader VPS, “AUREUM trades there, 24 hours a day, 5 days a week, even if you close MT5 and turn off your computer”, and it “only enters when its conditions are met: it doesn’t trade every candle or every day”. According to its home page, it uses “take-profit and stop-loss levels that adjust to volatility and market conditions at each moment, instead of fixed distances”.

Its published backtest, a simulation on XAU/USD on H1 from 2020 to 2026, has 439 trades and a maximum drawdown on balance of 21.84%. The home page also shows a live account verified by Myfxbook.

So what is the best time to trade gold?

There’s no answer that suits everyone. From 12:00 to 15:00 GMT in summer (8:00 to 11:00 a.m. ET) there’s more range and the spread weighs less against the price move, but that’s also when the news spikes come; the quiet hours offer less range and cost more in proportion. Here’s how to use this data:

1. Start with your clock. Find the hours you can trade in the table (in winter, what follows Europe and the US comes an hour later in GMT).
2. Adjust your stop and lot size to those hours, not to the daily average.
3. Measure your spread at those hours, especially overnight and near the daily break; what each trade costs you is covered in spread, slippage and commissions.
4. Check the calendar every week. On a jobs or Fed day, the same hour is a different market (gold economic calendar).
5. If you use a robot, look at the hours in its backtest. If you take some away by hand, it’s no longer the system that was tested.

And before you put real money in, try it for a few weeks on a demo account, at your hours and with your broker.

Frequently asked questions about gold volatility by hour