The 5,000 ounce contract and the $50 tick
A 1.00 XAGUSD lot is 5,000 troy ounces. The silver pip on most MT5 CFDs is $0.01, and 5,000 × $0.01 = $50.00 per pip. A $1.00 move is $5,000 per lot. Compare that with gold: 100 ounces and $10 per 0.10 pip. Silver is not a cheaper metal. It is a denser contract.
If silver prints 31.00 to 31.30, that is 30 pips and $1,500 on 1.00 lot. Typical spread is 1.8 to 3.2 pips ($0.018 to $0.032), already 6% to 10% of a 30-pip stop. In thin Asia the spread can double, which is why silver scalps before 12:25 UTC are a tax, not a strategy.
Why silver whips harder than gold at the same headline
Industrial demand (solar, electronics) plus monetary demand makes XAGUSD a high-beta shadow of XAUUSD. When gold runs $12, silver often runs $0.80 to $1.10, which is the full 65 to 110 pip ATR. COMEX New York (12:25 to 16:00 UTC) is the only session where the book is deep enough for a 25 to 45 pip intraday stop to be honest.
CPI and NFP still own the danger window, but silver adds a second trap: copying gold direction with gold size. connect your MT5 account to Venasri and treat silver as its own contract. If gold is already open, Correlation Guard should haircut or block silver so the metals basket is not 1.6× stacked.
Silver lot math on $100,000: 0.66 lots, not 1.45
Formula: lots = risk dollars / (stop pips × $50). At $1,000 risk and a 30-pip ($0.30) stop: 1000 / (30 × 50) = 0.67, rounded to the 0.66 lot reference. At 0.50% risk ($500) that is 0.33 lots. A 12 to 20 pip scalp stop at 1% would still be only 1.00 to 1.67 lots, and those stops do not survive the COMEX open.
Psychological levels sit every $0.50 and $1.00 (31.00, 31.50, 32.00). Measure the stop beyond the handle, then size with the Half-Kelly Lot Size Calculator & Equity Guard. If the calculator says 0.33 and your muscle memory says "about 1 lot like gold," trust the calculator.
Trade silver when the metals book is actually open
Prime window is COMEX New York. Skip the Asian coil unless you are mapping the range for a later raid. Use 25 to 45 pip intraday stops and 65 to 110 pip swing stops. Equity Guard should treat a 1.00 lot silver loser as a five-alarm event because $50 per pip eats $5,000 in 100 pips.
Confirm gold direction, US real yields, and spread under 3.5 pips on the Pre-Trade AI Confluence Checklist before you click. If gold is chopping around a $25 handle and silver has already traveled $0.70 on the day, the ATR is spent and the next "breakout" is often the mean-reversion slide that blows the daily floor.
