Guide · gold
Gold order flow: how to read it
Spot gold has no public order book, so gold order flow is best read on the Binance XAUUSDT perpetual, one troy ounce per contract. This guide shows how, with our own measurements: 37.1 % of weekday volume trades in five hours around the COMEX open, a weekend hour carries about 8 % of an open hour, and only one taker order in about seven hundred is $300,000 or more.
What gold order flow is, and where you can see it
Order flow is the record of who traded with whom: the limit orders resting in a book (the makers) and the market orders that hit them (the takers). For gold the hard part is finding it. Spot gold trades over the counter between banks and dealers, with no public book, and the COMEX futures book is licensed data. The Binance XAUUSDT perpetual is the deepest gold order book anyone can watch for free, and Swiftedge Depth shows it with every trade, so this guide is about that book. One contract is one troy ounce, and sizes are in ounces (oz).
Three things to keep in mind: XAUUSDT is a perpetual that follows the gold price through funding every 4 hours, not spot gold itself; it trades around the clock while spot gold has fixed hours; and it is one venue among many. It shows how gold is traded there, which usually moves with the wider market, not the whole market.
1. Start with the clock
Gold's volume follows the trading day of London and New York. From 15 September to 27 October 2026 (n = 999 hourly candles), the five hours around the COMEX open carried more volume than the seven Asian hours:
| Hours (UTC) | What happens | Share of weekday volume |
|---|---|---|
| 00:00-07:00 | Asia (Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai) | 27.6 % |
| 07:00-12:00 | London morning, LBMA morning auction (10:30 London) | 18.7 % |
| 12:00-17:00 | COMEX open (08:20 New York), US data (08:30 New York), LBMA afternoon auction | 37.1 % |
| 17:00-21:00 | COMEX settlement (13:30 New York), US afternoon | 13.1 % |
| 22:00-24:00 | After the daily break | 3.5 % |
Binance XAUUSDT, hourly candles 15 September to 27 October 2026 (n = 999), weekdays with spot gold open; the hour 21:00-22:00 UTC (daily break, US summer time) is left out. The shares add up to 100 %.
The busiest hours are when walls get tested and moves start. A move in the Asian night happens on a fraction of that volume, so a wall that breaks at 03:00 UTC has been tested by far fewer orders than one that breaks at 13:30 UTC. Gold's fixed times are listed in your time zone on gold trading sessions, and in Indian time in gold market hours in IST.
2. Know when spot gold is closed
Spot gold and COMEX close from Friday 17:00 to Sunday 18:00 New York time, for an hour every weekday (17:00-18:00 New York) and on some holidays. The perpetual keeps trading, but thinly. In our measurement an hour of the weekend close averaged 8.4 % of the volume of an open hour, and the daily break 16 %; a Saturday as a whole traded 8.5 % of a weekday. The typical hourly range shrank from 0.35 % to 0.06 %.
In those hours the exchange's index price has no spot quotes behind it, so the perpetual can drift from where spot gold reopens. Over the six weekends in the period, the perpetual moved between −0.27 % and +0.05 % from the Friday close to the Sunday reopen: small, but enough to matter for a stop. Swiftedge marks every closed hour on the gold pages and in Depth.
3. Read the walls in ounces
The gold book has few, large walls. In an hour of our own data on 27 October 2026, 99.9 % of the $0.50 price levels held less than 487 oz, and the largest held 559 oz. A wall of a few hundred ounces near the price is therefore unusual, and worth watching: does it hold when trades hit it, does it move with the price, or is it pulled just before the price arrives? The behaviour is the same as in any book and is explained in liquidity walls; the gold book is live in the gold order book heatmap, and today's largest walls are on gold levels today.
4. Watch the takers
Market orders show who is in a hurry. On 26 October 2026, a full day, the Binance XAUUSDT perpetual had 232,585 taker orders (fills in the same millisecond on the same side counted as one order). 351 of them were $300,000 or more and 33 were $1 million or more; 99.9 % were smaller than 96 oz. That is why gold whale trades starts at $300,000: it is roughly one order in seven hundred. Over the whole hourly sample, takers bought 49.2 % of the volume and sold 50.8 %, so neither side dominates on average; what matters is the balance in the minutes around a level.
In Depth the trades are bubbles, and CVD (cumulative volume delta) adds up the difference between bought and sold. Price going up while CVD falls means sellers are hitting bids that hold, and the reverse; the indicator is explained in CVD explained.
5. Add positioning and macro
- Funding every 4 hours. A positive rate means longs pay shorts. Gold's rate is usually small; a large rate means the perpetual trades away from the index: gold funding rate.
- Open interest and long/short. Rising open interest with a rising price means new longs; falling open interest means positions are closing: gold open interest and the gold long/short ratio.
- Liquidations. Forced closes add market orders on top of the normal flow: gold liquidations today and the estimate on the gold liquidation heatmap.
- Macro. Gold reacts to real yields, the dollar and US data, and the weekly COT report shows how funds are positioned: gold macro dashboard and gold COT report.
A short checklist
- Is spot gold open, and which session is it?
- Where are the largest walls within about 1 % of the price, and how long have they stood?
- When the price reaches a wall: is it filled, does it hold, or is it pulled?
- Who is aggressive: the bubbles and the CVD line.
- Is US data or a fixed time (LBMA auction, COMEX open or settlement) coming up?
Watch gold order flow live.The XAUUSDT book four times a second, every trade, sizes in ounces. Free, no sign-up.
Open gold in DepthCommon questions
Where can I see gold order flow for free?
In Swiftedge Depth for gold: the live XAUUSDT order book as a heatmap with every trade, CVD, liquidations and a footprint chart, free and without an account.
Is XAUUSDT order flow the same as spot gold order flow?
No. Spot gold trades over the counter and its order flow is not public. XAUUSDT is a perpetual on one exchange that follows the gold price; its flow usually moves with the wider market but is not the whole market.
When is gold order flow most active?
Around the COMEX open and the US morning. In our measurement, 12:00 to 17:00 UTC carried 37.1 % of weekday volume, more than the seven Asian hours together.
Does gold trade at the weekend?
Spot gold does not; the XAUUSDT perpetual does, on thin volume. A weekend hour averaged 8.4 % of the volume of an open hour in our measurement.