Types of Traders
There are different types of gold traders and each type is determined by the time which they hold their open trades and the lot sizes that they trade.
The most common trading types are:
- Scalpers
- Day Traders
- Swing Traders
- Position Traders
Scalpers
This is one of the more popular methods of trading gold, traders will open and hold their trades for a few minutes only and profit from only a few pip movement. Traders will use the one minute charts to determine the current market trend and open trades using this one minute chart.Scalpers will aim to make a profit of between 200 and 300 points per trade. 100 points is equal to $1 dollar change in the gold price, therefore this profit target is a $2 to $3 change in price.
Day Traders
These traders will open and close trades during the same day and will not hold overnight trade positions. Day traders will use the 5 minutes or 15 minutes charts to determine the trend direction and open trades using these charts. The day traders will hold their trades open for a few hours and try to make profits from the intraday market trends.
Day traders will aim to make a profit of between 700 and 900 points per trade. 100 points is equal to $1 dollar change in the gold price, therefore this profit target is a $7 to $9 change in price.
Swing traders
These traders open trades and hold them for a few days so as to make profits from the intraweek market trend that lasts for two or three days. These traders will sometimes leave their open trades overnight so as to catch more profit from the intraweek trend.
These traders will use the 1 hour forex charts to determine the trend of the market and place trades using this chart timeframe.
Swing traders will aim to make a profit of between 2000 and 5000 points per trade. 100 points is equal to $1 dollar change in the gold price, therefore this profit target is a $20 to $50 change in price.
Position Traders
These traders will hold their trades open for a few weeks to a few months and they will place trades that aim to make profits from the medium term and long term trend of the gold prices.
Position traders will use the Daily and Weekly charts to determine the market trend and place trades using these daily and weekly charts.Position traders will aim to make a profit of between 20000 and 40000 points per trade. 100 points is equal to $1 dollar change in the gold price, therefore this profit target is a $200 to $400 change in price.
About Day Trading Method
The most popular method of trading gold is the day trading method, most traders prefer to day trade gold and open and close their trades within the trading day. These traders will hold their trades open for only a few hours. This way a trader will aim to make profits of between 700 and 900 points which is the average daily movement of gold prices. At the same time a trader can close their trades quickly in case the market trend moves against their trade direction.
100 point movement is equal to a one dollar change in the price of gold per ounce. For example if gold moves from $1250 to $1251, this will represent a 100 point move in gold prices.
Day Trading Example
The example below shows a 15 minutes chart that is used for day trading. The day trader will use this 15 minutes chart to open trades. The trend below is upwards therefore a trader would have opened a buy trade. If the trader bought 1 gold lot at the price of $1210 per ounce and closed the trade at $1242 per ounce, this would be a $32 change in the price per gold ounce which is equal to a 3200 points change; this is because the gold price is quoted using two decimal points.
The profit of gold for every point is $1, therefore for this trade is $3,200 from this trade.
Day traders will only trade using the 15 minutes chart and hold their open trades as long as the trend is moving in their direction. Once the trend on the 15 minutes chart changes, then traders will close all their open trades and wait for another trade setup before opening another trade.
In the example above a trader would close their buy trade at $1242 because this is where the direction of the market changed as shown by the two moving averages that have reversed their direction and both have started to move downwards.
The above trend is determined on the 15 minutes gold chart. This trade was opened and only lasted for ten hours and a trader would have closed the trade after this time and wait for another trade setup the following day.
