Gold is a hard market to fool yourself on. It trends for years, then goes nowhere for years, and it doesn't have the stock market's long upward drift — the drift that quietly props up almost every dip-buying backtest on an index. A rule that only worked because the market went up tends to get found out on gold.
Our gold data: the GLD ETF daily since 2004, and fifteen-minute gold futures (GC) from June 2010 to April 2026. The rules are the same as everywhere on the site (how we test): costs on every trade, entries filled where the market really traded, the latest years held out as an out-of-sample test, and every number generated by the article's own script. The lists below are rebuilt from those results whenever a new test is published.
What we have found so far: gold's Friday effect is real, but the edge per trade is about one commission, so only a filtered version is left standing. The 200-day moving average, which works as a drawdown filter on stocks, backfired on gold. And gold has earned its keep as one part of a mix rather than as something to trade in and out of. The intraday gold-futures tests are written down and waiting in the queue at the bottom of this page.
Real but weak, conditional or beaten by buy-and-hold
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ETF momentum rotation: rules, 21 years of data — and an honest verdict
Rotating into the strongest of stocks, bonds and gold works on paper, but a plain equal-weight mix of the three did better risk-adjusted.
Weak Momentum rotation: hold the six-month winner: Sharpe 0.52 in-sample, 0.70 out-of-sample, max drawdown -33.6%
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The Friday gold effect: a real pattern you probably can't trade
Gold's Friday effect is real, but the edge per trade is about one commission; only a VIX-filtered version is left standing.
Weak Fridays when VIX is above 20: Sharpe 0.23 over the full test, 51.3% winners, max drawdown -22.0%
Failed Every Friday (Thursday close to Friday close): Sharpe 0.05 over the full test, 50.8% winners, max drawdown -40.3%
Failed Fridays above the 200-day average: Sharpe -0.02 over the full test, 49.7% winners, max drawdown -32.5%
What failed
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Does the 200-day moving average work? Tested on five assets
A drawdown tool, not a return booster: it helps assets that trend and crash hard, and backfires on gold and bonds.
Failed 200-day moving average, hold or cash: Sharpe 0.58 over the full test, max drawdown -35.1%
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The Strategy Graveyard: we stress-tested 150+ trading strategies — most didn't survive
Most strategies we screen fail our bar, and most of those aren't dead, just duplicates of edges we already own.
Failed Turtle Soup (Street Smarts): 4 markets tested, 0 passed; walk-forward mean Sharpe between -0.04 and -0.4.
Method and risk research on this market
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SPY vs QQQ vs gold vs bitcoin: the best asset, risk-adjusted
By risk-adjusted return, an equal-weight mix of stocks, the Nasdaq, gold, bonds and bitcoin beat every single asset.
Written down, waiting to be tested
These tests are pre-registered: the rules, the data and what counts as failure were fixed before any backtest ran. Working titles; the result is published either way.
- Linda Raschke's Holy Grail setup, tested on 16 years of Nasdaq and gold
- Fair value gap strategy: the win rate, measured on 16 years of Nasdaq and gold
- Gold scalping on one-minute charts: what costs do to it
- The Santa Claus rally on the Nasdaq and gold, tested
- Does gold actually hedge a stock market crash? Every drawdown since 2004
See all 6 of these results side by side on the scoreboard.
By topic: Nasdaq · Gold · ICT concepts · Classic books · All of them: the scoreboard
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FAQ
Is there a gold trading strategy PDF?
Each new gold test comes with its own PDF: the exact rules on one page plus Python code you can run on your own data. The older Friday/VIX rules are written out in full in the Friday gold article itself.
What is the best gold trading strategy you have tested?
Honestly, none has cleared our bar outright yet (as of October 2026). The closest is holding gold from Thursday close to Friday close only when the VIX is above 20 — a small satellite trade that needs cheap, futures-level execution to be worth it. The simpler versions failed after costs.
Does the 200-day moving average work on gold?
Not as a hold-or-cash filter. On gold it lowered the risk-adjusted return compared with simply holding it — unlike on stocks, where it mainly cut the worst drawdowns. The article shows where the line falls across five assets.
Do you test on XAUUSD, GLD or gold futures?
The GLD ETF for daily tests and gold futures (GC) for intraday ones. XAUUSD — spot gold, usually traded as a CFD — follows the same price closely, but costs, swaps and trading hours differ by broker, so check those before applying any result here to a CFD account.
