Average Daily Range of XAUUSD in 2026, and How Often Gold Stays Inside Its ATR Range

What is the average daily range of XAUUSD in 2026? Through 22 October it is $120.50 from high to low, or 2.63% of price, and the median day is $100.03 (2.20%). In 2024 the average was $33.02 (1.38%). How often does gold stay inside its daily ATR range? A band of the previous close plus and minus about 1.3 times the 14-day ATR, calibrated on 2020 to 2023 so that 90% of those days fit, contained both the high and the low of the next day on 88.6% of days from January 2024 to 22 October 2026.

Both numbers matter to anyone who sets stops and targets on gold. A stop loss that looked generous two years ago can now sit inside an ordinary day's movement, while a distance scaled to volatility kept pace. Below are the figures, what they show, and how to check them in your own terminal.

The daily range, year by year

The daily range is the day's high minus the day's low. The percentage divides that range by the previous day's close.

• 2020 (259 daily bars): average $31.08, or 1.77% of price; median $25.10
• 2021 (258 bars): average $23.76 (1.32%); median $20.82
• 2022 (258 bars): average $25.56 (1.42%); median $22.97
• 2023 (257 bars): average $23.67 (1.22%); median $20.81
• 2024 (259 bars): average $33.02 (1.38%); median $30.43
• 2025 (258 bars): average $60.70 (1.73%); median $51.22
• 2026 to 22 October (209 bars): average $120.50 (2.63%); median $100.03 (2.20%)

What the range figures show

The dollar range has more than tripled since 2024. The average day in 2026 is 3.6 times the average day in 2024. A distance set in dollars back then, whether a stop, a target or a price alert, now covers a much smaller part of the day: the median 2024 day ($30.43) is less than a third of the median 2026 day ($100.03). At the same lot size, the dollar value of an average day's swing is 3.6 times what it was.

It is not only the higher price. The first close of 2024 was 2,058.91 and the close on 22 October 2026 was 4,024.32, and a higher price alone widens a range measured in dollars. But the range also grew as a share of price, from 1.38% in 2024 to 2.63% in 2026, or 1.9 times. That 2.63% is the highest yearly average in the sample; the next highest is 1.77% in 2020.

The average day is wider than the typical day. In every year the median sits below the average, because the widest days pull an average up much more than they move a median. At least half of all days are therefore narrower than the average, so for an ordinary day the median is the better reference.

How often gold stays inside an ATR-based range

The band for each day starts from the previous day's close and adds or subtracts a fixed multiple of ATR(14), the 14-day average true range with Wilder's smoothing. The two multiples, one for the upside and one for the downside, were set on 2020 to 2023 data so that the high and the low of 90% of those days stayed inside, and were then left unchanged. The share of later days whose high and low both stayed inside the band, with the band's average width:

• 2024: 89.2% of days; average width 3.62% of price
• 2025: 87.6%; 4.44%
• 2026 to 22 October: 88.9%; 7.15%
• 2024 to 22 October 2026 together: 88.6%; 4.92%

The last column is the point. The band almost doubled in width between 2024 and 2026 because ATR rose with the market, and the share of days inside stayed between 87.6% and 89.2%. A distance scaled to current volatility, as a share of price or a multiple of ATR, rescales on its own; a dollar figure from another year does not. The band describes how far gold usually travelled from the previous close, not which way.

How to reproduce the figures

All you need is MetaTrader 5 and a spreadsheet.

1. In MetaTrader 5, open View, then Symbols. On the Bars tab, choose XAUUSD and the D1 timeframe, set the dates and click Request. Then click Export Bars to save the bars as a CSV file.

2. In the spreadsheet, add a column with high minus low for every row. For the percentage, divide each range by the close in the row above and multiply by 100. Group the rows by calendar year and take the average and the median. Leave out the current day if its bar is still open.

3. For the ATR band, add a 14-day ATR column, choose the two multiples on the earlier years, and count the later days whose high and low both stay inside the band built from the day before.

Expect small differences on another broker. Each server starts the trading day at its own clock time, so its daily bars, and therefore the ranges, come out slightly different. Price feeds also differ a little from broker to broker.

About the data

Daily bars from the IC Markets price feed in MetaTrader 5 (demo server), on server time, which is New York time plus seven hours: UTC+3 during US daylight saving time and UTC+2 otherwise. Period: 2 January 2020 to 22 October 2026; the last complete bar used is 22 October. Gold trades Monday to Friday, so each full year here has between 257 and 259 daily bars. The ATR band was calibrated on 932 days from 2020 to 2023 and tested on 725 days from 2024 to 22 October 2026.

These are historical statistics about past price movement, not a forecast and not trading advice. Trading gold with leverage involves substantial risk, and past market behavior does not guarantee future behavior.