MT5 Drawing Tools for Gold: Horizontal Lines, Trendlines, Rectangles and Fibonacci Step by Step

The short answer

Every drawing tool in MT5 sits in one place: Insert > Objects on the desktop app, or the Objects icon on the phone app. You choose a tool, click (or tap) on the chart, and for tools that need two points you hold and drag. That is all there is to placing a line.

For gold traders, four tools do most of the work:

1. Horizontal line: a single price, such as a previous high or low or a round number.
2. Trendline: a sloping line joining two highs or two lows.
3. Rectangle: a price zone, such as an overnight range.
4. Fibonacci retracement: pullback levels between a swing high and a swing low.

Below we place each one on the real gold chart of 30 October to 12 November 2026, then cover editing, copying, hiding and deleting. If MT5 is not yet set up for gold, start with our MT5 gold setup guide.

Where the tools are

MT5 on Windows or Mac

• Insert > Objects: every object, grouped into Lines, Channels, Gann, Fibonacci, Elliott, Shapes, Arrows and more.
• The Line Studies toolbar: the most used tools as buttons, such as the crosshair, lines, channels, Fibonacci retracement, text and arrows. If you cannot see it, open View > Toolbars and tick Line Studies.

Single-point objects (horizontal and vertical lines, arrows, labels) are placed with one click. Multi-point objects (trendlines, channels, Fibonacci tools) need a click on the first point, then a held mouse button while you drag to the second point. The object only appears once all its points are set.

MT5 on a phone

1. Open the chart and tap it to open the radial menu.
2. Tap the Objects icon, then Add Object at the top (or pick a recently used object).
3. Place the first point with a tap, then hold your finger down and drag to set the direction and size.

MetaQuotes notes that the mobile app keeps at most 512 objects across all charts and deletes the oldest ones automatically when you add more, so tidy old drawings now and then. Our MT5 mobile guide covers the rest of the phone app.

Turn on the magnet

The magnet snaps a point to the nearest open, high, low or close of a bar, which helps you hit a swing high exactly. On desktop, set Magnet sensitivity (in pixels) in the chart settings of Tools > Options > Charts; a value of 0 turns it off. On the phone app, points snap to the bar’s prices when you place them close.

Tool 1: the horizontal line

A horizontal line marks one price that matters: yesterday’s high, last week’s low, a level where gold turned several times, or a round number like $4,000.

How to draw it:

1. Click the Horizontal Line button (or Insert > Objects > Lines > Horizontal Line).
2. Click once on the chart at the price you want.
3. To set an exact price, double-click the line to select it, right-click, choose Properties, and type the price in Value on the Parameters tab.

Worked example (real prices, COMEX gold futures). On 30 October 2026 gold fell to $3,879.30 in the 19:00 GMT hour, its lowest price of the year in our futures data at that time. A trader who put a horizontal line there would have watched it for the next two weeks. Gold bounced to $4,157.70 by 9 November, then came back, and in the 14:00 GMT hour on 12 November it traded down to $3,870.70, through the line. By the next hour it reached $3,856.70.

That is the honest lesson of a horizontal line: it tells you where the market is being tested, not what will happen there. Once the price closed below the 30 October low, the old floor became a level overhead. Our support and resistance strategy explains how traders read a level that has broken.

Tip: in the line’s Properties, write a short note in Description, such as “30 Oct low”, and turn on Show object descriptions in the chart settings. Months later you will still know why the line is there.

Tool 2: the trendline

A trendline joins two or more swing lows in a rising market, or two or more swing highs in a falling one.

How to draw it:

1. Click the Trendline button (or Insert > Objects > Lines > Trendline).
2. Click on the first swing point, hold the mouse button and drag to the second swing point, then let go.
3. While you drag, MT5 shows the distance in bars, the distance in price points and the angle near the end point.

A trendline has three control points: the two ends change its length and slope, and the middle one moves the whole line without changing it. In Properties you can set the exact date and price of each end, and tick Ray right to extend the line into the future, which is how most traders use it.

Two rules that make trendlines more useful:

• Join real swing points that the price clearly turned from. MetaQuotes’ own help notes that the line should not cut through other prices between your two chosen points.
• Treat the line as a zone, not an exact price. On gold, which often moves $50 to $100 in a day, a line a few dollars off is normal.

Our glossary entry on the trendline shows what a valid and an invalid line look like.

Tool 3: the rectangle

A rectangle marks a price zone across a time period. Gold traders use it for an overnight range, an Asian session range, or a consolidation before a news release.

How to draw it:

1. Choose Rectangle from Insert > Objects > Shapes.
2. Click on one corner (for example the start time at the range high), hold and drag to the opposite corner (the end time at the range low).
3. In Properties, tick Draw object as background so the candles stay visible on top, and pick a light colour.

Worked example (real prices, COMEX gold futures). From the 23:00 GMT hour on 11 November to the 05:00 GMT hour on 12 November, gold traded in a box between $3,973.50 and $4,005.90, just around the $4,000 round number. A rectangle over those seven hours showed the range clearly. In the 06:00 GMT hour the price slipped out of the bottom of the box, and by the 08:00 GMT hour it had reached $3,933.00.

Ranges like this are why the chart of the day often marks the Asian session. To see how big gold’s hourly ranges usually are in each session, use the when does gold move most tool.

Tool 4: Fibonacci retracement

The Fibonacci retracement tool draws horizontal levels between a swing high and a swing low. MT5 draws levels at 0, 23.6, 38.2, 50, 61.8, 100, 161.8, 261.8 and 423.6 percent of the swing. Many traders watch 38.2, 50 and 61.8 for pullbacks.

How to draw it:

1. Choose Fibonacci Retracement from Insert > Objects > Fibonacci, or the toolbar.
2. Click on the start of the swing, hold the mouse button and drag to the end of the swing. - For a pullback after a rise, drag from the swing low up to the swing high. - For a bounce after a fall, drag from the swing high down to the swing low.
3. On the Levels tab of its Properties you can edit, delete or add levels, or press Defaults to restore them. Add %$ to a level’s description to show its price on the chart.

Worked example (real prices, COMEX gold futures). Drawn on the rise from the 30 October low of $3,879.30 to the 9 November high of $4,157.70, a swing of $278.40, the tool gives these levels:

Two things stand out. The price did pause near 61.8% and near 78.6%, which is why traders watch them. But it did not hold either one, and the whole rise was given back in three days. Fibonacci levels show where to look, not which way the price will go. Our Fibonacci guide for XAUUSD covers extensions and how to combine the levels with structure.

Editing, copying, hiding and deleting

Select and edit

• Select an object by double-clicking it (or with a single click if you turn on “Select objects by single mouse click” in the chart settings). Markers appear on its points.
• Move it by dragging the middle marker.
• Edit it: right-click and choose Properties. The tabs are:
• Common: name, description, colour, line width and style, “Draw object as background” and “Disable selection” (handy to stop you moving a line by accident).
• Parameters: the exact dates and prices of each point, and options such as Ray right.
• Levels: only for Fibonacci tools and Andrews’ Pitchfork.
• Visualization: the timeframes on which the object shows.

Copy

Hold Ctrl and drag the middle marker of an object to make a copy. To move several objects at once, select them, then hold Alt and drag one.

Show a line on every timeframe

If a line drawn on the 1-hour chart disappears on the daily chart, open its Properties, go to Visualization and tick All timeframes. Most traders want key levels on every timeframe and short-term lines only on the small ones.

See every object at once

Right-click the chart and choose Object List. It lists every drawing on the chart, and you can edit or delete from there. Clearing out old lines once a week keeps the chart readable.

Delete and undo

Select the object and choose Delete from the right-click menu, or press Backspace to remove objects one at a time. Deleted the wrong one? Press Ctrl+Z, or use the Charts menu, Objects, Undo Delete.

On the phone app, long-tap an object for about a second to delete it, or open Objects, tap the Delete icon, select the drawings and tap Delete. The Objects list also has Hide All (clears the view without deleting) and Lock All (stops accidental moves).

A simple routine for gold charts

1. Start on the daily chart. Draw horizontal lines at last week’s high and low and the nearest round numbers. The gold cheat sheet lists last week’s levels and pivots if you want to check yours.
2. Move to the 4-hour chart. Add a trendline only if there are at least two clear swing points to join.
3. On the 1-hour chart, draw a rectangle around the overnight range before London opens.
4. Add Fibonacci only after a clear swing, not on every wiggle.
5. Write a description on each object and set Visualization so daily levels show everywhere.
6. Use the lines to plan the risk. Decide where a stop would go beyond a level and size the trade with the position size calculator.

If you want alerts when gold reaches a level you have drawn, our gold price alerts page explains the options.

Common mistakes

• Too many lines. Ten levels close together tell you nothing. Keep the few that the price clearly reacted to.
• Lines drawn on wicks you cannot see on other timeframes. Check a level on the daily chart before you trust it on the 5-minute chart.
• Forgetting the provider’s price. Your MT5 gold price is the provider’s spot quote, not COMEX futures, so levels can differ by a few dollars from charts elsewhere. Draw your lines on the chart you trade.
• Never deleting anything. Old lines from months ago clutter the chart and can be mistaken for current levels. Use the Object List to clear them.
• Treating a line as a signal. A touch of a line is a place to watch, not a reason to buy or sell.

Key takeaways

• All MT5 drawing tools are under Insert > Objects (desktop) or the Objects icon (phone).
• One click places a horizontal line; trendlines, rectangles and Fibonacci need a click and a drag.
• Properties sets exact prices, descriptions, levels and the timeframes an object shows on.
• Ctrl+Z undoes a deletion; the Object List shows every drawing on a chart.
• On the real 30 Oct to 12 Nov gold move, price paused at the 61.8% and 78.6% levels but broke both, then broke the 30 October low: lines show where to look, not what will happen.

Sources

• MetaTrader 5 Help: Analytical objects (inserting, selecting, copying with Ctrl, moving groups with Alt, Backspace and Ctrl+Z, magnet sensitivity, the Common, Parameters, Levels and Visualization tabs).
• MetaTrader 5 Help: Trendline and Horizontal Line.
• MetaTrader 5 Help: Fibonacci Retracement (default levels, Ray Right and Ray Left, %$ in descriptions).
• MetaTrader 5 Android Help: Analytical objects (Objects icon, editing, the 512-object limit, Hide All and Lock All).
• Prices in the worked examples: COMEX gold futures (GC=F) 1-hour bars via Yahoo Finance, as published on this site in assets/data/gold-h1.json (data to 12 Nov 2026). Times in GMT.

Educational content only, not financial advice. Trading gold with leverage carries a high risk of loss.

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