Silver on Friday gets its own risk budget, smaller than any other day. I set it up after a run of Friday losses last year and it's stayed.
The numbers I use. On Monday to Thursday, my daily loss limit for silver is 0.6% of the account, and my maximum risk per silver trade is 0.3%. On Friday the daily limit is 0.3%, and each trade risks 0.15%. Half on both.
Why silver specifically. It has the worst Friday record of any instrument I trade. Looking at my log over three years: Friday silver trades have a negative average, while Monday to Thursday are positive. The losses cluster in two places: around the US jobs report on the first Friday of the month, and in the 15:00 to 17:00 London window, when it often moves sharply for no clear reason.
Why not just stop trading it on Fridays? I thought about it. But my Friday morning silver trades, between 07:00 and 11:00, are fine. It's specific hours that are the problem, not the day as a whole.
So the full Friday rule is: half risk all day, no silver trades after 13:00, and nothing at all on jobs report Fridays.
Since I started this, my Friday silver results have been close to flat. Not exciting, but it has stopped Friday afternoons from wiping out a good week, which was the whole point.
Advertisement
Friday risk budget for XAGUSD scalps
Recommended broker for automated trading & scalping
-
Shadow Trader
- Posts: 974
- Joined: Wed Sep 09, 2026 5:19 pm
Re: Friday risk budget for XAGUSD scalps
Silver deserves its own budget more than most instruments, mainly because the lot maths catches people out. At a lot of brokers one lot is 5,000 ounces, so a 10 cent move is 500 dollars per lot, and a stop that looks small on the chart is not small on the account.
With your Friday numbers on a 50,000 account, 0.15% is 75 dollars. With a 20 cent stop that works out to 0.075 lots, so anyone whose minimum step is 0.01 has to round, and I'd always round down on Fridays.
The 15:00 to 17:00 window matches my own experience. Part of it overlaps the 16:00 London fix for currencies and the general squaring before the weekend, and silver seems to get dragged around by flows that have nothing to do with silver.
If you also trade gold, do the two share the Friday budget? I had a stretch where I followed the silver rule perfectly and then lost the same amount on gold in the same hour, because they were basically one trade.
With your Friday numbers on a 50,000 account, 0.15% is 75 dollars. With a 20 cent stop that works out to 0.075 lots, so anyone whose minimum step is 0.01 has to round, and I'd always round down on Fridays.
The 15:00 to 17:00 window matches my own experience. Part of it overlaps the 16:00 London fix for currencies and the general squaring before the weekend, and silver seems to get dragged around by flows that have nothing to do with silver.
If you also trade gold, do the two share the Friday budget? I had a stretch where I followed the silver rule perfectly and then lost the same amount on gold in the same hour, because they were basically one trade.
-
Shadow Trader
- Posts: 974
- Joined: Wed Sep 09, 2026 5:19 pm
Re: Friday risk budget for XAGUSD scalps
LondonScalper, jobs Fridays are a full silver blackout for me now, not half risk. The morning edge you keep between 07:00 and 11:00 disappears on those prints, and the sheet is cleaner when the day is simply closed.
Gold and silver share one Friday metals budget on my book after the stretch I mentioned. Whatever is left after a silver loser is what gold may use, and the reverse, so I cannot run the same hour twice under two symbols.
Half risk all day still applies on normal Fridays, with the hard cut after 13:00. Flat on the week is an acceptable Friday metals result.
Lot step rounding stays down only. On a 50,000 account the 0.075 figure becomes 0.07, never 0.08, because Fridays are not when I want the extra tick of size.
Have you measured whether the morning silver trades alone carry the day once the afternoon is removed? I am curious whether you still need a few post 11:00 tickets for the sample to look fine.
Gold and silver share one Friday metals budget on my book after the stretch I mentioned. Whatever is left after a silver loser is what gold may use, and the reverse, so I cannot run the same hour twice under two symbols.
Half risk all day still applies on normal Fridays, with the hard cut after 13:00. Flat on the week is an acceptable Friday metals result.
Lot step rounding stays down only. On a 50,000 account the 0.075 figure becomes 0.07, never 0.08, because Fridays are not when I want the extra tick of size.
Have you measured whether the morning silver trades alone carry the day once the afternoon is removed? I am curious whether you still need a few post 11:00 tickets for the sample to look fine.