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Asian Session Gold Driftthe hours when physical demand sets the price

Evidence: WeakIntermediateGold · Session

Gold trades around the clock, but not to the same people. The Asian hours are dominated by physical demand — jewellery, coin and bar buying in the two countries that consume most of the world's gold — while the London and New York hours are dominated by financial flows.

The idea here is that those two kinds of buyer behave differently, and that the Asian session therefore has a mild, persistent character of its own. The idea is reasonable. The evidence for trading it is thin, and this page is rated accordingly.

This page is about a driver of the gold price, not a chart shape. The driver is what the evidence is for — the entry trigger is ordinary and interchangeable, and swapping it for another one in this library does not damage the idea.

Category
Gold · Session
Timeframe
M15 or H1 · intraday only
Suitable pairs
XAUUSD only
Session
Asian hours, roughly 00:00–07:00 GMT — verify against your broker's server time
Indicators / tools
Session boxes · ATR(14) computed on the Asian hours alone

Valid setup

GD-05 · ASIAN SESSION GOLD DRIFT — VALID SETUP XAUUSD · M15 · the first three Asian hours set the box, and everything is closed before London LONG 4366.39 4370.52 4374.66 4378.79 4382.93 4387.06 4391.19 NEW YORK CLOSE FIRST THREE ASIAN HOURS — the box TRADEABLE WINDOW LONDON — flat before this THE FIRST THREE HOURS TARGET = 1 × box height 1R TARGET = one box height ENTRY = break of the three-hour high STOP = the three-hour low 1 2 3 4 00:00 03:00 London 4385.00 4380.00 4370.50 ① Asia opens above the New York close ② Three hours build the box — nothing traded yet ③ Verify the drift on your OWN data before any of this ④ Break of the box high, inside the session only ⑤ Stop at the box low, sized on an Asian-hours ATR ⑥ Flat before London, whatever the position is doing

Exact rules

Entry

  • Build the evidence first: measure the average Asian-session return on your own data, over at least a year, before trading a single lot of this. If it is not there in your data, this page is not a strategy for you.
  • Setup: gold holds above the previous day's New York close through the first three Asian hours.
  • Trigger: a clean break of the first three hours' high, taken only inside the session.
  • Flat before the London open. The population of buyers changes there and the premise stops applying.

Stop loss

  • Below the low of the first three Asian hours.
  • Use an ATR computed from Asian hours only. The daily ATR is far too wide for this session and will size you into a position four times too large.
  • Risk 0.25%–0.5%. The evidence is weak, so the size should be too.

Take profit / exit

  • 1 × the first-three-hours range, or the London open, whichever comes first.
  • No trailing. The session is short and there is nothing to trail.
  • Never carry this into London on the grounds that it is working. That is a different trade with different participants.

Build Asian Session Gold Drift

Reading this page is free and always will be. Taking it is what costs — the complete MQL5 for the rules above, yours to keep, permanently. Five of them cost $10 and they never expire.

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Trading carries risk and most retail accounts lose money. Nothing on this page is financial advice or a recommendation to trade. The chart is an illustration of the rules on constructed candles — it is not a record of a trade and not a backtest.