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Gold is quoted in dollars, so a stronger dollar usually weighs on it, and a weaker dollar supports it. That inverse link explains much of the price action on typical days.

Exceptions are frequent. During geopolitical stress, gold rises alongside the dollar, since both act as safe havens. When real yields climb, gold often drops even if the dollar stays flat. Central bank buying has also altered the pattern in recent years.

Many forex scalpers trade XAUUSD for its big ranges. The spreads are wider than on majors, and the volatility is high. A 5 pip target on EURUSD translates into a very different move on gold, where one pip definition varies by broker.

For forex traders, gold can serve as a cross-check. If EURUSD rises and gold falls, the dollar story is conflicted, and conviction should be lower.

Contract specifications, tick values and margin requirements on gold differ from currency pairs, and mixing them up causes surprises.

How is gold handled alongside currency pairs here, and has the dollar link held in recent weeks?

I trade gold alongside the majors and treat it as a separate animal, mostly because of the contract details you mention. My current broker measures a gold move differently from my old account, and in the first week after I moved over I sized a trade badly because I assumed they were the same. Now I keep a sticky note with tick value and margin for XAUUSD on the monitor.

The dollar link has been patchy lately, in my experience. There have been plenty of sessions where the dollar rose and gold rose with it, usually on geopolitical headlines. I've stopped using gold as confirmation for EURUSD trades for that reason, and instead watch it mainly as a sign of how nervous the market is.

What has helped is trading gold at smaller size than my currency trades, maybe a third. The ranges are bigger and the spread is wider, so even a good entry can swing a long way against me before it works. Smaller size keeps the stops sensible.