NFP hits at 8:30 ET, first Friday of the month. The first move usually manipulates one side of the range, then distributes in the real direction: it runs the stops above or below the pre-news price, then reverses.

This study uses the pre-news high and low as targets on Gold (GC). Price sweeps one side, leaves an Inverse Fair Value Gap (IFVG) on the rejection, and you enter when it breaks back inside the range, aiming for the opposite side's liquidity. An optional Silver (SI) filter only keeps the trade when silver confirms the same move. Tested on 1-minute GC data, 2016 to 2026.

Rules: sweep the pre-news high/low, wait for the rejection gap, enter on the break back inside. Stop 0.10 (one GC tick) beyond the sweep. Target the opposite liquidity (the pre-news pivot). The SI filter keeps a trade only if silver reaches its mirror target within 2h30 of the release. Missing SI bars at 8:30 ET return no confirmation — that's a data gap, not a disqualifier.

Performance — GC, 10 years

No filter: 68 trades, profit factor 0.87, net -20.0 GC points. With the silver filter: 8 trades, win rate 62%, profit factor 6.18, net +31.6 GC points.

NFP is the strongest GC signal in the 8:30 news model.

Why gold behaves differently from the Nasdaq

The Nasdaq and the S&P are both equity indices and move almost in lockstep, so cross-confirmation between them is a clean signal. Gold and silver are both metals, but their intraday liquidity splits at news: gold is deep and continuous, silver is thin and patchy. The SMT signal is structurally weaker because SI's sparsity means many "no confirmation" readings are data gaps rather than genuine divergence.

Disclaimer

68 total setups, 8 SMT-filtered trades. AI-assisted analysis, not financial advice.

Non-Farm Payrolls · IFVG + SMT