Trading US Shares from Australia: 24-Hour CFDs, Overnight Gaps or the ASX? (2026)

How is gold actually priced on Pepperstone?

Gold gets special treatment in Pepperstone's pricing, and understanding the two models is most of the cost decision.

Standard: everything in the spread

On the standard commodity pricing, XAUUSD quotes from 0.1 points with no commission; the whole cost of the trade is the gap between buy and sell, exactly as Pepperstone prices every other commodity CFD. One number, visible on the ticket, no arithmetic. For occasional gold traders this simplicity is worth having.

Razor Gold: raw spread plus commission

Gold is the one commodity Pepperstone also offers in Razor form: the raw spread passed through from 0.1 points, with a fixed, transparent commission from USD$3.50 per lot per side on top, converted to AUD at spot on an AUD account.

Why the split model exists

The logic mirrors the forex Razor account: the commission never widens, so active traders get a cost floor they can plan around while only the raw spread breathes with the market. On a metal whose spread can move sharply around US data, separating the fixed toll from the variable one is a real advantage for anyone trading gold in volume.

Who should skip it

A handful of trades a month will not notice the difference, and the standard pricing's single number is easier to track. As with forex, the commission model pays for itself through frequency; without frequency, take the simplicity.

Size, margin and leverage

A standard gold lot follows the usual 100-ounce convention (confirm the contract spec on your platform before sizing), and under ASIC's retail caps gold CFDs trade at up to 20:1 leverage, a 5% margin requirement, one notch tighter than the 30:1 on major forex pairs; other metals sit at 10:1. At current gold prices a single lot is serious notional exposure, so fractional sizing is the sensible default while you learn how this market moves.

When does gold move, from an Australian clock?

Gold trades nearly around the clock on weekdays, but it does not move evenly around the clock, and Australians sit in an interesting position on its map.

The trading hours, precisely

XAUUSD prices from 01:01 to 23:59 platform time Monday to Thursday and until 23:55 on Friday, with a roughly one-hour daily pause around the New York close and no weekend trading. That schedule keeps gold available through the entire Australian day and evening every weekday, with the daily break falling in the Australian morning.

Where the volatility lives

Gold's heaviest volume arrives with London and New York, whose overlap lands in the late Australian evening, and the US data releases that move gold hardest, inflation prints, payrolls, Fed decisions, hit around midnight to 1am on the east coast. But gold is also one of the few markets with a genuine Asian session: Shanghai and Singapore flows give it life during Australian business hours in a way most Western markets lack.

So day-to-day trading works fine on an Australian schedule.

The practical conclusion for stops and sizing

The biggest single-event moves happen while most Australians are asleep, which argues for one discipline above all: never carry a gold position into a major US data night with sizing that assumes you will be awake to manage it. Stops placed for the data, not for the chart, are what survive this market's schedule.

The overnight cost: tom-next swaps

Positions held past 5pm New York time incur metal swaps, calculated the same way as forex pairs: one point times your trade size times the tom-next rate, with multi-day adjustments around weekends. Swing traders should check the live swap for their direction before committing, because on a leveraged metal position held for weeks the financing grows into a bigger line than the spread ever was.

Which setup should an Australian gold trader choose?

Three practical decisions cover it, and none of them takes long.

Standard or Razor Gold?

Volume decides. Occasional traders take the standard spread and its simplicity. Anyone trading gold most days should price the Razor route: a raw 0.1-point market plus a fixed USD$3.50-per-side commission gives active traders the same predictable cost structure that makes the forex Razor account work, and the more you trade, the more the fixed commission model rewards you.

Which platform?

Gold trades on all of them: MT4, MT5, cTrader, TradingView and the Pepperstone platform. The choice follows your workflow rather than the instrument; on gold the cost decision is the pricing model, whichever platform you pick, and that keeps this simpler than the forex equivalent.

How big?

Smaller than instinct suggests. Twenty-to-one leverage on an instrument that can move one or two percent on a data print means a full lot swings hard against a small account, and the market's loudest moments arrive at Australian bedtime. Work backwards from what a losing trade should cost you, then size to that.

The verdict on Pepperstone for gold

For Australians trading XAUUSD, the offer is genuinely strong: a 0.1-point market, the only Razor-style raw-plus-commission pricing you will commonly find on a commodity, availability through the whole Australian day on every platform, and clean tom-next financing you can check before committing. The constraints are the market's, not the broker's: 20:1 is the ASIC ceiling, the biggest catalysts land late at night Australian time, and swaps tax patience on held positions. Gold sits alongside the rest of the pricing picture in my Pepperstone forex guide, and if the late-night data problem resonates, the same timezone logic drives my piece on 24-hour US share CFDs.

Frequently Asked Questions

References

1. Pepperstone: commodity CFDs (gold spreads and hours)
2. Pepperstone: Razor Gold explained
3. Pepperstone: ASIC retail leverage limits