What time do gold stop hunts usually happen?

Most tradable XAU sweeps occur between 06:00 and 09:00 UTC around the London open, and between 13:30 and 16:00 UTC when New York tests the London session high or low.

Do gold sweeps happen during the Asian session?

The pattern appears, but liquidity is too thin for the reversal to travel far and spreads are wider. Asian-hours sweeps are better used as information about where the range extremes sit than as trades in themselves.

Can I trade gold sweeps around news?

No. Around CPI, NFP and FOMC, gold routinely sweeps both sides within minutes with heavy slippage. The pattern looks identical to a valid sweep and behaves nothing like it.

Best Times for Gold Stop Hunts and Sweeps

XAU liquidity sweeps cluster at session hand-offs: the pre-London probe from 06:00 to 07:00 UTC, the London open from 07:00 to 09:00 UTC, and the New York overlap from 13:30 to 16:00 UTC when US flow tests the London high or low.

Sweeps printed in the New York afternoon and at the 21:00 to 23:00 UTC rollover lack the liquidity for the reversal to travel, and rollover wicks are frequently spread artefacts rather than real trades.

Around scheduled US releases gold sweeps both directions within minutes with heavy slippage, so the pattern is untradable there despite looking identical on the chart.