Spread cost calculator

Why the headline spread is not comparable

A raw account quoting gold at $0.15 with $7 per lot round-turn commission and a standard account quoting $0.45 with no commission are not obviously different until you convert both to total cost per round turn at your actual size. At 0.10 lots those are $2.20 and $4.50 respectively — a real difference, and not the one the headline numbers suggest.

The comparison also changes with position size, because commission scales with lots while the spread cost scales with lots too but from a different base. Run your own sizes rather than trusting a general recommendation.

The share of the target is the number that decides strategy design

On a $3 target at 0.10 lots the gross gain is $30, and a $0.30 spread plus $7 round-turn commission takes $3.70 — over 12% before slippage. Against a $30 target the same costs are 1.2%. This single ratio is why short-target gold strategies are so much harder than they look.

It is also paid on losers. A losing trade pays the full cost and returns nothing, so the cost per trade figure understates the drag on a system with a sub-50% win rate.

Spread is not constant

The XAUUSD spread widens sharply at the daily rollover, at session transitions and around high-impact news — which is exactly when most strategies generate the most signals. A system without a spread guard concentrates its worst-priced entries at its busiest moments.

Ours refuses gold entries above $1.00. On our own broker that is reached in 3 of 70,546 five-minute bars, so it is insurance rather than a filter doing daily work — but the same threshold on a standard account would fire constantly, which is the whole point about account type.