Stop-loss closures on gold tripled at eToro on October 30 as the metal broke below $4,000, while retail traders elsewhere added to their bets. Long positions in a sample tracked by the trading-community site Myfxbook rose 74% by volume from the start of that day to the market’s reopening.Gold fell more than 3% that Friday and ended near $3,874 an ounce, its lowest close since October 2025, as a selloff in technology stocks spread across markets.For brokers, the build-up shows where margin risk sat. The average entry price of those longs was $4,223 on Monday, which left them nearly 8% under water, more than the 5% margin a retail client in the EU or UK posts on gold at maximum leverage.At some brokers, gold is most of the flow. It makes up 50% to 90% of volumes at Rostro Group, depending on the region, its futures head Saul Knapp said last year.London's trading industry is coming home!Retail Longs Grew as the Price FellMyfxbook's sample covers about 15,000 positions from accounts linked to the site, with a 60-minute delay, so it shows trader behavior rather than any single broker's book.Long volume went from 1,257 lots at midnight UTC on Friday to 2,189 lots when trading reopened on Sunday, and the number of long positions rose 34% to 12,548.Longs made up 72% of the volume by the reopening, up from 61% on Friday morning. The same pattern showed the first time gold broke below $4,000 on October 22 and 23, when long volume rose 35% to 1,668 lots.Brokers that publish client positioning showed a similar tilt on Monday. IG showed 87% of client accounts long gold. Across brokers tracked by FXSSI, the average was 72.9% long, from 85.7% at OANDA to 63.7% at XM.That appetite tends to grow with volatility, with spikes in the VIX often coinciding with higher viewership, according to an analysis on FM Intelligence's Market Movement page.Brokers have dealt with a lopsided gold book before. During gold's rally to a record near $5,600, several CFD brokers halted gold trading or imposed strict margin conditions because internalized client trades left them exposed on one side.Exchange margins have also changed since then. CME Group switched gold futures to a 5% maintenance margin based on notional value in January, so the requirement now moves with the price.At eToro, Stop-Losses Closed Almost HalfTwo brokers answered questions from FinanceMagnates.com about their own clients. At eToro, pre-set stop-losses made up 47% of gold position closures on October 30, compared with about 22% on a typical day."Not net buyers, and not panic sellers either," eToro spokesperson Francesco Tius said in written answers.Buying and selling were split almost evenly, as on a normal day, he said. Positions closed outnumbered positions opened by 12%, and the gap came from stop-losses, while 13% fewer users than usual closed gold positions by hand.Stop-loss closures ran about 200% above a normal day, the highest in the three months eToro reviewed. Closures by UK users stayed in line with a normal day, and eToro measured gold's fall at about 3% over October 30, from midnight to midnight UTC."A lot of clients had defined their exit levels in advance," Tius said.The company said it cannot separate margin calls from other closures, so stop-loss closures are the closest measure it has, and silver was not part of the review.Trade Nation Clients Bought the FallAnswers from Trade Nation, which agreed in October to take over FXCM's UK client book, matched the Myfxbook pattern: its clients stayed long through the drop and kept adding exposure.Its clients chose to "average into their long positions, buying into the fall," Daniel Pitts, Trade Nation's head of trading, said in emailed answers.Automatic closures rose only slightly from a typical day, and clients did not cut their gold positions in any significant way, Pitts said. Trade Nation made no changes to margin requirements for precious metals.Larger investors sold while retail traders bought. Hedge funds had been net sellers of gold futures for nine straight weeks of Commitments of Traders data, Saxo Bank's Ole Hansen said.Holdings of gold-backed exchange-traded funds fell by six tonnes in the last week of October, he said, citing Bloomberg data.Temporary Weekend Limits at eToroeToro set temporary maximum exposure limits for clients opening gold CFD positions over the weekend after the drop. The limits have since been removed and trading conditions are back to normal, Tius said.More retail platforms now quote gold on Saturdays and Sundays. At least 19 firms announced a dedicated weekend or 24/7 gold product between February 17 and October 1, FM Intelligence counted.eToro is one of the platforms that let clients in some regions trade gold around the clock, a feature it listed when it launched its Edge desktop terminal in October.The October 30 drop was also smaller than gold's slide on January 30. That day the metal fell as much as 8% in one session, a day after its record high.Neither eToro nor Trade Nation reported execution or pricing problems during the October move.This article was written by Damian Chmiel at www.financemagnates.com.