Gold futures replay

Replay past gold futures sessions with the DOM, the footprint chart, time and sales and the full order book, right in your browser. Pick a day and a minute, press play, and trade GC or MGC with simulated orders while the session plays.

The numbers below come from GC 1-minute candles in the MarketByOrder archive, October 1, 2025 to September 16, 2026, about 247 sessions. Gold went from about $3,900 to a high of $5,627 in January and back to about $4,300 over that time. One GC contract is 100 ounces, so every $1 move in gold is $100 on GC and $10 on MGC.

When gold trades

Gold trades nearly around the clock, but most of the volume arrives in a few hours. Median contracts traded a minute on GC, by hour, times in ET:

Volume doubles in the 8:00 hour, when the COMEX floor session opens at 8:20 and US economic data comes out at 8:30, and peaks from 9:00 to 11:00. If you replay gold overnight, expect a thin book and slow tape. If you replay the US morning, expect the opposite.

Three opens, three sizes

Gold has three opens worth practicing: London at 3:00 ET, COMEX at 8:20 and the stock market at 9:30. For each one we took the price at the open and measured the next 30 minutes: the distance from high to low, and how far price moved against a position opened right at the open, long or short, whichever was worse.

The 9:30 open moves twice as far as London. London is the place to practice reading the gold book while it is still slow enough to follow.

Replay GC from 9:25 ET on September 9, 2026

How many MGC fit a prop firm drawdown

One GC contract held from the open went past $2,000 against you within 30 minutes on 9% of London opens, 28% of COMEX opens and 46% of 9:30 opens. Dividing the drawdown by the move that 9 opens in 10 stayed under gives the most MGC you could have held through the first 30 minutes on 9 days in 10:

That is a position held with no stop, so it measures how far the open swings, not how to manage a trade. The same measure for NQ, MNQ, ES and MES is in How many MNQ or MES contracts survive the open.

It changes month to month

The median distance from gold's daily high to its low, from the 6 pm ET reopen to the 5 pm close, was $101.50 an ounce over the year. By month it ranged from $70 to $164:

A day in March 2026 covered more than twice the ground of a day in December 2025. Size for the gold you are trading now.

Two sessions worth replaying

January 30, 2026: the biggest day of the year

Gold peaked at $5,480 at 7:09 pm ET on January 29 and fell to $4,700 by 1:39 pm on January 30: $780 an ounce, about $78,000 on one GC contract, on 471,905 contracts. It came down in steps. The first leg went through Asia, the second through London around 4:00 am, and the last from noon, when the 1:00 pm hour traded more than 64,000 contracts, the busiest hour of the day.

Replay GC from 12:00 ET on January 30, 2026

September 4, 2026: the jobs report into the COMEX open

The COMEX open at 8:20 was quiet, 100 to 450 contracts a minute with GC holding around $4,514. The monthly jobs report came out at 8:30. That one minute traded 5,078 contracts and GC fell from $4,523 to $4,430, and two minutes later it reached $4,419. On the DOM, watch how much size is resting either side of price in the last minute before 8:30, and how quickly it comes back once the first move is done.

Replay GC from 8:20 ET on September 4, 2026

An account is required to start a replay.

Practice gold in a replay

1. Under Session date, pick a day. Set the Time a few minutes before the open you want to practice, and pick GC or MGC as the Primary instrument.
2. Click Open session. The footprint chart, the DOM and time and sales open together.
3. Set Qty, PT and SL in the order panel, then trade from the DOM or the chart.
4. Slow the replay to 0.1x around 8:30 data releases, when the book changes too fast to follow at full speed.

For more on the volume profile period to use on gold, see Volume profile settings for NQ, ES, GC and 6E. For every futures contract you can replay, see the futures market replay page.