Intraday gold swing with a daily entry limit, a time-stop, and a fixed stop-loss

The gold swing as one procedure

Front-month full-sized gold futures are read on a five-minute bar. The documented swing-trading procedure enters long or short early in the session, holds through the bar series, and closes only on a time-stop, a fixed stop-loss, or a stop-and-reverse signal.

An entries-today-limit allows at most one new long or short entry on any given calendar day. That daily cap, the opposite exits for shorts and longs, and the fixed dollar loss bound are the same workflow, not separate tactics.

Shorts end on time, longs end on a reverse

Short positions are closed by a time-stop. That exit closes the short after a set amount of session time so a modest winner is not left open to reverse into a loss.

Longs stay open until a new short signal produces a stop-and-reverse. The stop-and-reverse closes an open long only when a new short signal appears, so the system is always either flat or in the opposite direction.

In the test period, cutting shorts early was preferred because of an upward bias, so a modest winner was more often locked than left to be stopped out as a loser.

A known dollar loss before the trade is taken

The procedure uses a fixed 600-dollar stop-loss and no trailing stop. The stop-loss is a fixed dollar loss bound placed at entry, so the maximum loss per trade is known before the position is taken.

The test applied a 12.50-dollar commission-and-slippage charge per contract per side.

A reversal after a range, not a running thrust

The system looks for a statistically logical reversal area before entering. It is described as working better just after a range or consolidation than inside an already-running trend thrust.