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What Is Gold Trading (XAU/USD)

Gold on a trading platform is a symbol, XAU/USD, the price of one troy ounce in dollars, traded like a currency pair with a lot of 100 ounces, so that a dollar of price is a hundred dollars at one lot and a cent is one. This paper shows you gold trading in five lines with the real prices of 25 August 2026; the idea as the troy ounce weight; gold on the daily chart from June to September 2026; that day's 91.58-dollar range at 0.01, 0.10 and 1.00 lot; and the Market Watch row and Specification on your platform, where the contract size of 100 is the line to find.

Difficulty
Beginner
Reading time
5 min
Pages
8
Reviewed by
Saman Rahbar

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Gold trading, in five lines

Gold on a platform is a symbol, XAU/USD, XAU being gold's code in the list of currencies, priced as dollars per troy ounce. At 10:00 on Tuesday 25 August 2026 one ounce cost 4,638.34 dollars in this library's bars. One lot is 100 ounces, 463,834 dollars at that price, and a one-dollar move in the price is 100 dollars at one lot; the smallest step is a cent, one dollar at one lot. That day gold ran from 4605.29 to 4696.87, 91.58 dollars top to bottom, which is 9,158 dollars at one lot. No bars change hands: the contract is the price of an ounce, and the trade is the difference between two of those prices.

The troy ounce

Picture a troy ounce weight beside the metal it measures. A troy ounce is 31.1 grams, an old weight that predates the metric system and that gold is still sold by everywhere in the world, so every gold price is the price of this one weight. XAU/USD is that price in dollars, 4,638.34 at 10:00 on 25 August 2026. The weight is fixed and only the number moves, which is why a gold chart can be read exactly like a currency chart, with an ounce in the place a euro would be.

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