Gold broke below $4,000 on October 30, triggering a wave of stop-loss closures at eToro while retail traders elsewhere bought the fall. Larger investors moved the other way, according to Saxo Bank's Ole Hansen.
Stop-loss closures on gold tripled at eToro on October 30 as the metal broke below $4,000. Retail traders elsewhere added to their bets. Long positions in a sample tracked by Myfxbook rose 74% by volume from the start of that day to the market's reopening.
Gold posts its lowest close since October 2025
Gold fell more than 3% that Friday and ended near $3,874 an ounce, its lowest close since October 2025, as a selloff in technology stocks spread across markets.
Myfxbook's sample covers about 15,000 positions from accounts linked to the site. Long volume went from 1,257 lots at midnight UTC on Friday to 2,189 lots when trading reopened on Sunday. The number of long positions rose 34% to 12,548.
Retail longs sit under water
Longs made up 72% of the volume by the reopening, up from 61% on Friday morning. On Monday, IG showed 87% of client accounts long gold, and the average across brokers tracked by FXSSI was 72.9% long.
For brokers, the build-up shows where margin risk sat. The average entry price of those longs was $4,223 on Monday, which left them nearly 8% under water. That is more than the 5% margin a retail client in the EU or UK posts on gold at maximum leverage.
eToro and Trade Nation describe different client behavior
At eToro, pre-set stop-losses made up 47% of gold position closures on October 30, compared with about 22% on a typical day. According to eToro spokesperson Francesco Tius, clients were "Not net buyers, and not panic sellers either" that day.
Trade Nation, by contrast, said its clients stayed long through the drop and kept adding exposure. Head of trading Daniel Pitts said automatic closures rose only slightly from a typical day.
Larger investors sold while retail traders bought. Saxo Bank's Ole Hansen said hedge funds had been net sellers of gold futures for nine straight weeks of Commitments of Traders data. He added that holdings of gold-backed exchange-traded funds fell by six tonnes in the last week of October, citing Bloomberg data.
Neither eToro nor Trade Nation reported execution or pricing problems during the October move.
Source: Finance Magnates
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