Contract math before the setup
Treat 1.00 standard lot as about $100 per $1 of XAUUSD, or about $10 per $0.10. A $5 stop on 1.00 lot is about $500, 0.50% of $100,000. A $5 stop on 0.50 lots is about $250. A $35 move, the kind of range a loud day can print, costs about $3,500 on 1.00 lot and about $4,900 on 1.40 lots. Open a Venasri account with gold's dollar-per-dollar filled in, not a forex pip value.
The 2-Step day is $5,000. The 1-Step day is $4,000, so 1.20 lots through a $35 move is about $4,200 and already through the 1-Step line. The 3-Step maximum is a static $5,000, so one wide gold day can be the whole 3-Step account.
A structural stop that still fits
If the chart stop needs to be $8 away, 1.00 lot risks about $800. That fits six times in a $5,000 day, which is tight. Cut to 0.60 lots and the same $8 stop is about $480, closer to twelve attempts if you also leave a buffer. Do not keep 1.40 lots and shorten the stop to $2 just to make the calculator happy. Gold will trade through $2 without asking.
Equity Guard should flatten the 2-Step near $4,000 of daily loss, which is less than a $35 move on 1.40 lots. If the guard cannot flatten inside the move you are willing to hold, the lot is too big. Bot Control should attach the $8 stop at the fill so a manual gold click is not naked.
News and the weekend are when the $35 shows up
News trading is permitted without a 2-minute profit confiscation, on evaluations and funded accounts. That is when a $35 move is most likely. The permission lets you be in the trade. The $5,000 line lets the trade end the account. Weekend holding is also allowed, and a Sunday gap of $30 on 1.00 lot is about $3,000.
The daily reset uses the closed balance at 00:00 and does not raise the floor for a floating gold winner. You can hold a green gold swing through midnight without the Lark penalty some other firms charge. If the pullback tags $5,000 down from the day's closed reference, the hold is over anyway.
The trail and the static floor treat gold differently
On the 2-Step the maximum is static, 8% to 10%. A gold winner does not pull that floor up. On the 1-Step the maximum trails at 6%, $6,000 at the start. A large open gold profit can lift that trail, and giving the trade back spends it. Scale gold size up only after you recompute how many $500 stops the remaining trail still holds.
There is no best-day rule on 1-Step or 2-Step, so a $3,000 gold winner counts toward the $8,000 Phase 1 target. Expert Advisors are allowed if they are not a grid, a latency trick, or high-frequency, under 2,000 requests a day. A gold trail that modifies every $0.10 will burn that budget. Move the stop at $1 levels you planned.