Volatility Compression Break waits for gold to go unusually quiet over a short run of 15-minute candles, records that zone, and then judges the first clean move out of it. It trades only if the very next candle confirms the move and there is still enough room left to be worth the risk.
What it does: Measures how quiet the last eight 15-minute candles are against a long recent baseline, and records the zone before anything happens. Judges the first meaningful move out of that zone, and requires the very next candle to confirm it. Takes one opportunity per zone, whether it works or not, and skips a confirmation that arrives too far away to leave room.
When it works: Quiet pre-event coils that resolve sharply. Late Asian hours into the London open. After a tight pause near a level the market is watching.
When it struggles: Quiet periods that simply continue, where it does nothing for days. Moves that leave the zone and snap straight back inside it. Thin holiday sessions where the quiet reading itself is misleading.
What the trader controls: Risk per trade, as a percentage of the account or a cash amount. Daily loss limit — once hit, no new entries for the rest of the London trading day. Maximum open positions on gold at any one time. Sessions it may trade, and whether high-impact news blocks new entries. You can switch the model off at any time, and reducing or closing risk is never blocked.
The method behind Volatility Compression Break is documented under XAU session breakout at https://goldhunts.com/gold-strategies/xau-session-breakout. Gold Hunts publishes win rate and sample size for closed XAUUSD trades only — never profit or loss figures, and never a projection.
GHX-10 Volatility Compression Break v2.0 is designed for a specific gold market behaviour and records a plain-English reason for every decision. Coming to forward testing. It is not yet available for account activation. It assesses each completed 15-minute candle, with the hourly picture read alongside it, and never decides from a candle that is still forming.
Its approach to gold: It measures short-term quiet in gold from completed 15-minute candles — how far price is ranging, how wide its usual spread of prices has become, and how far it is travelling on average — and compares all three against a long run of recent readings rather than against a feeling. When a short run of candles is quiet enough on every measure at once, the high and low of that run are recorded as a zone and then left alone. The zone is never redrawn, widened or improved later. A quiet zone is not a direction. It gives no view on which way price will leave, so there is no position before the move, no order sitting on both sides and no anticipated direction. Only the first meaningful move out of the recorded zone counts. It must open inside the zone, travel decisively, and close beyond the boundary while holding most of its own move. The very next candle has to confirm that move: carry it further, stay clear of the boundary it just left, close with conviction, and not overrun so far that nothing is left. A later candle cannot rescue a failed one. The move also has to clear the range the previous hours were already trading in. Leaving a small zone while still inside a bigger one is not an expansion. Each quiet zone gives one opportunity only. A failed break, an ambiguous candle that reaches out of both sides, or a zone that simply expands from the inside all finish that opportunity — and price has to become genuinely active again, then form a wholly new quiet run, before anything is considered there again. Every trade carries a stop beyond the far side of the recorded zone and a target set from the width of that zone, both fixed before the order is sent. If the confirmation arrives too far from the zone to leave enough reward against that risk, the trade is skipped rather than the stop or target being moved to make it fit. Entry is valid only for a short window after that candle closes, at a fresh executable price, and only while the spread and the distance moved since the close are both inside what it accepts. One position at a time. No averaging down, no adding to a winner, no part exit, no re-entry on a retest and no reversal on the same zone. It closes if price completes a candle back inside the recorded zone, if the move stalls without progress shortly after entry, ahead of a major scheduled announcement, at the next verified trading break, and in any case within a fixed time of the fill. Once it is a full unit of risk ahead on verified prices, protection is tightened behind price and never loosened. This version is in demonstration research. Its behaviour has been checked against recorded gold candles and reproducible worked examples; its performance is not established.
Its dedicated public ledger is at https://goldhunts.com/gold-models/ghx-10-volatility-compression/ledger. The record begins with the first eligible demonstration forward-test trade and will include every closed result, whether it wins or loses. Nothing is backfilled with simulations. Customer trades are never published. Results are shown in net R with gross R alongside, and sample size is always visible. Demonstration results do not represent live trading.
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