XAUUSD quote stalls: what I do when the tape freezes

[LondonScalper]

Gold stops ticking. The last price sits there for four, five, eight seconds while the chart on another feed is clearly moving. If you scalp XAUUSD long enough this will happen to you, usually at the worst moment.

My rules for it, written after a few expensive lessons:

The moment I notice a stall, I stop doing anything that sends an order. No new entries, no modifications. A modify request sent into a frozen quote is the one that comes back with an error or executes somewhere strange once the feed resumes.

I check a second source. I keep a gold chart from a different data provider open on a small screen. If both are frozen, it's probably the market itself pausing, often around 13:30 London on US data or at the daily rollover. If only my broker's feed is frozen, it's a feed or connection problem on their side or mine.

If I have an open position without a server-side stop, which I try never to have, I note the time and wait up to 20 seconds. If nothing returns, I try to close from the broker's web terminal, which runs on a separate connection.

Afterwards I log the time, the duration and what the other feed did. Over the past year I've logged 14 stalls longer than five seconds. Nine happened within a minute of a US release.

[Shadow Trader]

Fourteen stalls over a year matches roughly what I saw on my own log, though mine clustered harder around 13:30 than the rollover.

The attached chart is an illustration of the kind of gold stall I hate most: price frozen on the broker feed for about seven seconds while a second feed has already moved several dollars, and any order sent then would have been guessing.

img_13111.png (71.05 KiB) Viewed 22 times

Your rule of doing nothing during the stall is the right one. I would add one more: if I already have a working order resting when the stall starts, I cancel it as soon as the feed returns, before I decide anything else.

Half of my bad fills after a freeze were old limits that filled into the new price.

I also keep the web terminal open, but I timed how long it takes to log in cold. About 25 seconds on a good day. That is longer than your 20 second wait, so I leave it logged in before London if gold is on the card.

Of your nine stalls near US releases, how many of them left you with an open position when the feed died?

[Fairman]

Over the past year I've logged 14 stalls longer than five seconds. Nine happened within a minute of a US release.

In those nine, how often was the second feed frozen too? That's the split that tells you whether to blame the market or the broker. If both feeds stopped together, it's the market pausing around the number, and the only defence is not having orders working into it. If only the broker's feed stalled while the other kept ticking, that's a broker-side choice during news, which some firms make on purpose. And what were the other five, rollover, or random times in the session? Random stalls on a quiet tape would bother me more than nine on release minutes, because nothing in a news filter would protect against them.

[Shadow Trader]

Fairman's second feed split is how I sort my own log now. When both feeds stop together I treat it as the market pausing, stay flat, and cancel anything working the moment ticks return.

The broker only freeze is the one I handle differently. If my feed is stuck while the second feed is still ticking, I do not send anything into it, not even a stop change. I go straight to the web terminal I keep logged in, because it runs on a separate connection and usually shows the live price.

Of my own broker only freezes, most were not on release minutes at all. Two came around 09:40 on a quiet tape, and that is what made me add a second data feed in the first place.

LondonScalper, your other five stalls are the ones I'd want bucketed by hour. A freeze at rollover is expected and easy to avoid, but a random one in the middle of London says something about the feed or the route.

Did any of the broker only stalls change how you trade gold, or did you just log them and carry on? I'm still deciding whether those random ones justify a separate account just for metals.