Markets · Dossier

Gold

GCMGCXAUUSDGold just lived both halves of its own cautionary tale: a record +65% year in 2025 and an all-time high near $5,600 in January 2026, then the largest one-month dollar decline on record in March. At $100 a point on GC, this dossier states what the contract is, when it moves, and what those distances do to an account under published risk rules.

Primary symbol
GC
Avg daily range
1.2%
Sources cited
45
As of
2026-07-31

The instrument

Contract unit
100 troy ouncesCOMEX GC, minimum fineness 0.995 (CME COMEX Rulebook Ch. 113). About $405,000 notional with spot near $4,050 (2026-08-01).
Tick
$0.10/oz = $10.00Per contract. A $1.00/oz move is $100 per contract.
Micro contract
MGC, 10 troy ozOne tenth of GC: $0.10 tick = $1.00, a $1.00/oz move = $10. About $40,500 notional at the same level.
Exchange
COMEX (CME Globex)
Hours
Sun–Fri 18:00–17:00 ETOne-hour daily halt 17:00–18:00 ET (5:00 PM–4:00 PM CT with a 60-minute break).
Months
Feb, Apr, Jun, Aug, Oct, DecPhysically delivered; trading terminates the third-last business day of the delivery month.
Exchange margin (GC)
Roughly $10,000–$20,000 per contractDeliberately a range: published citations in mid-2026 run from stale $8,140 initial (NinjaTrader mirror) to ~$11,000–13,000, and margins move with volatility — check CME and your broker before sizing anything. MGC maintenance was $1,700 as of Oct 2025 (QuantVPS).
CFD equivalent
XAUUSD, 1 lot = 100 ozBroker convention, not exchange-defined: a $1.00 move on one standard lot is $100 — the same dollars-per-point as one GC.

How it moves

A typical day travels $40–60 — about 1.0–1.5% of spot at $4,050 — and published ADR estimates disagree above that: one source says $30–45, another $60–100 with $150–300 on high-impact news days, likely different sample periods. What is not in dispute is the tail: gold fell 6%+ in a single day in October 2025 (its biggest drop in roughly twelve years) and lost $611 in March 2026 — the largest one-month dollar decline on record. Gold trades real yields and the dollar first: the March 2026 selloff was driven by rising real yields and a stronger dollar after oil crossed $90, not by any failure of the metal itself.

Average daily range

1.2%

2025–2026; typical $40–60/day at ~$4,050 spot (derived from published ADR figures) · source

The scheduled events

WhenWhatWhy it matters
Monthly, 08:30 ET US CPI (BLS release schedule) The classic gold repricing event; news-day ranges run $150–300 (2%+). FTMO forbids touching XAUUSD positions ±2 minutes around it on funded Standard accounts.
Eight scheduled meetings a year, 14:00 ET statement, 14:30 press conference FOMC decision Gold trades the real-yield read-through; same ±2-minute prop lockout applies.
First Friday of the month, 08:30 ET Nonfarm payrolls On FTMO’s restricted-event list for XAUUSD together with Advance GDP and FOMC Minutes.
Ongoing, structural Central-bank buying Official-sector purchases ran 1,136t (2022), 1,051t (2023), 1,045t (2024), 863t (2025) — versus a 473t/yr average across 2010–2021 (World Gold Council). Record ~$89B flowed into gold ETFs in 2025.
Friday 17:00 ET → Sunday 18:00 ET Weekend gap No trading over the weekend; a stop-loss fills at the gap open, not your level. Many props restrict weekend holds for exactly this reason.

The extremes on record

  • 2024 — +25.5%, gold’s best year in 14, with 40 record highs during the year (source)
  • 2025 — +65–66%, the best year since 1979 (futures ~+71%): roughly $2,606 to ~$4,325 by year-end (source)
  • 2025-10-21 — One day after an intraday high of $4,380.89, gold fell 6%+ (~$300) — the biggest one-day drop in about twelve years (source)
  • 2026-01-28 — All-time high near $5,600/oz (sources print $5,589–5,602) after a +20–22% January (source)
  • 2026-03 — −$611 in one month — the largest absolute monthly dollar decline on record, −12%, the worst monthly percentage since June 2013; −18.5% from the ATH by March 19 (source)

This instrument inside the corridor

The rulebook draws a corridor on a simulated $100,000 account: a daily floor at −5% and a phase-one target at +10%. Those two published percentages, priced in this instrument’s average day:

Inside the corridor Simulated · computed, not measured
An average day's range
1.2% of $4,050 ≈ 48.60 points
Worth per full contract (GC)
$4,860 per average day
Worth per micro (MGC)
$486 per average day
Daily floor: −5% of the $100,000 sim
$5,000
Contracts until one adverse average day breaches it
1 full contract ($4,860 of range) — at 2, one ordinary day ends the account
Perfect average days to the +10% target ($10,000), 1 contract
≈ 2.1 days of full-range capture

SIMULATED. Range inputs: 1.2% average daily range (2025–2026; typical $40–60/day at ~$4,050 spot (derived from published ADR figures)), reference price $4,050. Perfect capture of a full day’s range does not exist; this is geometry, not a promise. Spot was ~$4,044–4,054 on 2026-08-01 — about 28% below the January 2026 all-time high — and a “typical” $40–60 day widens to $150–300 on news days, so the corridor stretches roughly 3× on CPI and FOMC dates.

Ways in

ChannelSymbolWhat it actually is
Futures GC 100 oz on COMEX; $100 per $1.00 move, exchange margin roughly $10k–$20k per contract (check CME/your broker).
Micro futures MGC 10 oz, one tenth of GC: $10 per $1.00 move; maintenance margin was $1,700 as of Oct 2025.
CFD XAUUSD The prop-firm instrument: 1 standard lot = 100 oz, so $1.00 = $100/lot — same dollars-per-point as one GC. Broker convention, not exchange-defined.
ETF GLD SPDR Gold Shares — the largest physically-backed gold ETF, expense ratio listed at 0.40% (per SSGA; not independently re-verified for this dossier).

Do prop firms let you trade it?

Availability is a rulebook question, not a marketing one: an instrument a firm lists but voids trades on around its scheduled events is only half offered. Check the current terms before relying on a row below — firms change theirs without notice, and we publish ours.

FirmOfferedThe detail that matters
up·me opens at v1.2 The corridor above is our published rule set for it. The instrument list ships with rulebook v1.2, before anything can be bought — the row you can hold us to. Create an account to be in the first cohort when it opens.
FTMO true XAUUSD is the most-traded symbol at FTMO, ahead of US30.cash and EURUSD — and the one FTMO singles out for its hardest rule: on funded Standard accounts, no opening, modifying, or closing XAUUSD (or DXY) positions within ±2 minutes of Fed rate decisions, NFP (with unemployment and wages), Advance GDP, FOMC Minutes, or CPI y/y; a violation is a breach. Challenge/Verification and Swing accounts are exempt. Typical spread ~$0.15–0.30 in standard hours. (source)
FundedNext true Cut gold leverage on Stellar 2-Step from 1:100 to 1:10 in January 2026 (challenge and funded), still in effect as of July 2026, while forex majors stayed at 1:100. Reported by a secondary source — confirm on fundednext.com before relying on it. (source)
FundingPips true Dynamic leverage on gold: roughly 1:50 on small positions, scaling down to about 1:5 above ~$1M notional on 2-Step Pro/Zero. Reported by a secondary source — confirm on fundingpips.com. (source)
Topstep true Futures on CME/COMEX/NYMEX/CBOT are permitted, including GC and MGC. (source)
Apex Trader Funding false All metals halted since 2026-03-14: GC, SI, MGC, HG, PL, PA suspended on evaluation and Performance accounts, with no announced return date. Trading a halted instrument can terminate the account. Not a gold venue until Apex lifts the halt. (source)

How traders blow up on it

The same account-ending patterns recur on this instrument often enough to have names. None of them requires being wrong about direction.

  1. Trading the symbol the firms restrict hardest. No firm publishes per-symbol breach statistics, so “gold blows the most accounts” is unverifiable. What is documented: XAUUSD is FTMO’s most-traded symbol, FTMO’s ±2-minute news lockout names XAUUSD specifically, FundedNext cut gold to 1:10 leverage, FundingPips tightens leverage dynamically on gold, and Apex suspended the entire metals complex after the March 2026 volatility. Firms act as if gold is the account-killer. (source)
  2. Full-size GC sizing on an evaluation account. A 100-tick ($10) stop costs $100 on MGC but $1,000 on GC — roughly 40% of a typical $2,500 trailing drawdown on a $50k evaluation, gone on one stop-out. The base rates are already against you: about 5–10% pass prop evaluations and only ~7% of funded accounts ever receive a payout. (source)
  3. Breaching the daily-loss limit on a news candle. The most common FTMO breach is the 5% daily-loss limit ($2,500 on a $50k account). Gold’s news-day range of $150–300 means one badly-timed CPI position at $100/point covers that distance several times over — which is exactly why the ±2-minute lockout exists. (source)
  4. Weekend gaps through the stop. Gold does not trade from Friday close to Sunday evening. A stop-loss resting over the weekend fills at the gap open, not at your level, and many props restrict weekend holds for exactly this reason — check each firm’s rules. (source)
  5. Assuming the trend protects you. The traders who blew up in 2026 were long the best-performing major asset of 2025. After +65% in a year and an ATH near $5,600, gold dropped $611 in a single month — the largest dollar decline on record — and sat about 28% below the high by August. A record year and a record drawdown fit inside seven months. (source)
  6. Trading round-number “stop hunts” as if proven. Liquidity clustering at $50/$100 round levels (4,000 / 4,050 / 4,100) is widely asserted in trader-education content, but no rigorous public study supports it. Treat it as market folklore — a microstructure heuristic, not a fact to size against.

On the forecast desk

Questions this dossier suggests, in the form the forecast desk uses: a resolution rule and a named source, published before any probability is. These are drafts — nothing below is open for forecasts, and none has a desk number yet.

Draft — not yet a live question

Will the LBMA Gold Price PM fix at or above $4,500/oz on any business day on or before 2026-09-30?

Resolves YES on the first qualifying PM fix, via the LBMA precious-metal prices page (ICE Benchmark Administration auction, 3:00pm London, published daily).

Draft — not yet a live question

Will the December 2026 COMEX gold future (GCZ26) settle above $4,200 on Friday 2026-09-04?

Resolves from CME’s official GC daily settlements page for that date. Naming the exact contract month avoids roll ambiguity.

Draft — not yet a live question

In which band will the LBMA Gold Price PM land on the first London business day after the September 2026 FOMC decision: <$3,900 / $3,900–4,100 / $4,100–4,300 / >$4,300?

Resolves from the LBMA PM fix; the FOMC date comes from the Federal Reserve’s published meeting calendar. LBMA PM is preferred for spot questions — a single auditable daily print with a free public source; there is no canonical “spot at midnight”.

Sources

Every number above is drawn from one of the documents below; a figure that cannot be traced to one does not belong on this page. Corrections: hello@upme.com.

  1. CME COMEX Rulebook Ch. 113 — Gold futures (100 oz, 0.995 fineness, delivery terms)
  2. CME Group — Gold futures (GC) contract specifications
  3. CME Group — Micro Gold futures (MGC) contract specifications
  4. Ironbeam — GC contract specifications (tick, hours)
  5. Bullion Trading LLC — Gold futures explained: COMEX contracts (delivery months, termination)
  6. QuantVPS — COMEX Micro Gold futures specs (MGC maintenance margin $1,700, Oct 2025)
  7. Prop Trading Vibes — Gold futures trading (GC margin ~$11–13k citation; 100-tick stop math)
  8. XABCD Trading — NinjaTrader margin requirements mirror (GC $8,140/$7,400; likely stale)
  9. JM Bullion — live gold price chart (spot ~$4,044–4,054, 2026-08-01)
  10. TradingEconomics — gold spot price
  11. investingnews.com — highest price for gold (ATH prints; record $89B 2025 ETF inflows)
  12. CBS News — highest gold price in history, 2025 to 2026 (Jan 2026 ATH, +20–22% month)
  13. todaygoldprices.live — gold price history 2024–2026 (~$2,600 → ~$5,600, +116% in ~15 months)
  14. FXNX — Trading XAUUSD ADR (typical ~$30–45/day, spikes on CPI/NFP)
  15. Pro-Scalper — gold volatility (alternative ADR $60–100 normal, $150–300 news days)
  16. GoldSilver — Why gold fell during the March 2026 oil shock (real yields + USD channel)
  17. World Gold Council — Gold Demand Trends FY2025, central banks (863t 2025; 1,045t 2024; 473t/yr 2010–2021 avg)
  18. World Gold Council — Gold Demand Trends FY2024
  19. BBN Times — gold hits record $5,600 before sharp pullback (Jan 2026 US–Iran/Hormuz spike)
  20. BLS — CPI release schedule (08:30 ET)
  21. Federal Reserve — FOMC meeting calendars (14:00 ET statement)
  22. World Gold Council — gold’s 2024 performance, best in 14 years (+25.5%, 40 record highs)
  23. Fox Business — gold soars 66% in record 2025, experts eye $5,000 for 2026
  24. Yahoo Finance — gold on pace for best year since 1979 (2025)
  25. CNBC, 2025-10-21 — gold’s record run pauses (intraday ATH $4,380.89 on 10-20, −6%+ next day)
  26. Finance Magnates — gold declines 6.8%, largest single-day drop in years (2025-10-21)
  27. GoldSilver — gold and silver market correction 2026 (−$611 March, bull-market framing)
  28. WisdomTree — The month gold broke: five lessons from the March 2026 selloff (−12%, worst monthly % since June 2013)
  29. BullionVault — Q1 2026 sharpest quarterly correction since 2013; −21% peak drawdown by Feb
  30. FTMO blog — trading statistics (XAUUSD most-traded symbol, ahead of US30.cash and EURUSD)
  31. FTMO official — updated trading conditions for DXY and XAUUSD (±2-minute news lockout; last modified 2025-12-10)
  32. BrokerAnalysis — prop firms for gold trading (FTMO XAUUSD spread ~$0.15–0.30)
  33. Prop Trading Vibes — FundedNext rules (gold leverage 1:100 → 1:10, Jan 2026; secondary source)
  34. Prop Trading Vibes — FundingPips gold strategy (dynamic leverage ~1:50 → ~1:5; secondary source)
  35. Topstep FAQ — permitted exchanges include COMEX (GC, MGC)
  36. Apex Trader Funding support — Trading Halt: Metals Contracts (all metals halted since 2026-03-14)
  37. QuantVPS — prop firm statistics (~5–10% pass evaluations; ~7% of funded accounts paid out)
  38. Traders Second Brain — FTMO review (most common breach = 5% daily-loss limit)
  39. MT5 Trading Guide — the Friday weekend gap in gold
  40. Vantage Markets — weekend gold trading (gap risk, stop fills at the open)
  41. SSGA — SPDR Gold Shares (GLD) fund page (expense ratio 0.40%; not independently re-verified)
  42. LBMA — LBMA Gold Price (AM/PM auctions, 10:30am and 3:00pm London, run by ICE Benchmark Administration)
  43. ICE — IBA LBMA precious metals benchmark administration
  44. LBMA — precious metal prices (public daily fixes)
  45. CME Group — GC daily settlements page (futures-question resolution source)

Trade it inside published rules

The corridor this dossier prices — the −5% daily floor, the +10% target, and every other limit — is published, versioned and dated in the rulebook, before any account exists to apply it to. When the product launches, this instrument trades inside those rules or it does not trade here.

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