How to read the gold map

Value area and POC

For each day, week and month we measure how much traded at every price. The POC is the busiest price; the value area (VAL to VAH) holds about 70% of the volume. Current levels are still forming and can move; previous (prev) levels are fixed. Naked POC: an earlier day's POC that price has not traded back to yet.

Built from exact traded volume at each price (tick data) where our capture is complete; otherwise estimated from 1-minute bars (usually within a dollar).

VWAP

The volume-weighted average price since the start of the day, week or month: the average price paid by everyone in that period. Above it, the average buyer is in profit; below it, the average seller is.

Futures (GC) vs XAUUSD, live vs delayed

Our volume comes from COMEX gold futures (GC). Most traders use XAUUSD, which trades below futures by a gap (the basis). We measure that gap live and convert every level. The XAUUSD price on these pages is live (every 5 seconds). Futures prices and charts are shown at least 10 minutes delayed; levels are recalculated every 5 minutes. Your broker's quote can differ by about a dollar: enter your own gap.

Big orders: how we detect them

From the exchange's market-by-order feed (every order added, changed, cancelled or filled), recorded with Bookmap:

• Iceberg: one resting order that traded at least 100 lots and at least twice the most it ever showed. "Passive buyer" = a resting bid that sellers hit. It is a detection, not a certainty: several orders refilling the same price can look alike.
• Big aggressive order: one order (one order id) that bought or sold at least 60 lots at market, even if it filled across several prices. Price = its average fill.
• Large resting order: one order of at least 100 lots that stayed at a price for 5+ minutes.

Our recorder can drop events when the feed is very busy, so sizes and counts are approximate.

News reactions

For jobs reports, CPI and Fed decisions we find the release minute in our own 1-minute futures data and measure the range in the next 5, 15 and 60 minutes. Samples are small (one per release): they describe the past, not the next release.

Sources

Futures volume: COMEX gold futures via NinjaTrader and Bookmap (derived values only). XAUUSD: broker feed. Macro: FRED (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis), CFTC. Calendar: faireconomy.media. We never give signals; everything here is education.