A Weekly Swing Trading Plan for Gold: The Sunday Routine That Replaces Screen-Watching

Swing trading gold means holding positions for days, aiming for moves of tens of dollars. It suits people who cannot watch screens all day, if the work is done in advance. This is a routine that takes about an hour on the weekend.

1. Read the higher time frames (15 minutes)

• Weekly chart Is gold trending or ranging? Where are the last two weekly highs and lows?
• Daily chart Where did last week close relative to its range? A close near the high suggests strength going into the new week.

Write one sentence: "Gold is in a [trend/range] between [level] and [level]."

2. Mark the levels that matter (15 minutes)

• Last week's high, low and close.
• The nearest 100- and 50-dollar round numbers; see round-number levels.
• Levels from the latest daily brief.
• Any obvious support or resistance on the daily chart.

The key price levels tool helps you calculate pivots.

3. Check the calendar (10 minutes)

List the week's high-impact US releases and central bank events, with times in your own time zone. Plans need to account for:

• NFP, CPI, FOMC: see NFP, CPI, FOMC.
• Speeches by the Fed chair.
• Holidays that thin liquidity.

4. Write if-then plans (15 minutes)

For each level, write what you will do:

• "If gold pulls back to 4,050 and shows a bullish reversal on the 4-hour chart, buy with a stop below 4,035, target 4,110."
• "If gold closes the day below 4,000, stand aside until a retest."

Two or three plans are enough. More than five means you don't have a view.

5. Size and set alerts (5 minutes)

• Calculate the position size for each plan with the position size calculator, at no more than your normal risk per trade.
• Set price alerts at each level so you don't need to watch the chart. TradingView and most broker apps can do this.
• Check the triple-swap day if you expect to hold through midweek.

During the week

Check in at set times, for example before work, at lunch and in the evening. Act only on the plans you wrote. If price does something you didn't plan for, the default is to do nothing.

On Friday

Record each trade, and each plan that triggered but you didn't take, in your trading journal. That record is what improves next week's plan.

Questions traders ask

How big should swing trade stops be? Big enough to sit beyond daily noise, often several times the size of an intraday stop. Reduce position size to keep the dollar risk the same.

Do I need to watch the market every day? No. Alerts and pre-set orders do most of the work.

Can I use this with a full-time job? Yes. That is what it is designed for.