EURUSD around ECB rate decision: flat, fade, or first impulse?

[LondonScalper]

EURUSD around ECB: flat, fade, or first impulse?

ECB days invite three bad personalities: the flat-and-bored trader who then FOMO-enters late, the fade-everything hero, and the first-impulse chaser who pays the spread twice and calls it aggression.

My default is flat through the decision and the immediate press headlines. I only engage after my stand-aside timer ends, spread normalises, and there is a clear post-event structure I already defined as tradeable — continuation or failed drive — not a vibe from the first vertical candle.

Fade is allowed only when the opening drive fails by my invalidation rules, not because “ECB always overreacts.” First-impulse hunting is retired unless it was written as an event trade with event-sized risk, which for me usually means no trade.

On ECB days, are you flat-by-default, a planned fade trader, or a first-impulse hunter — and what makes you switch modes?

Press-conference language can move EURUSD after the decision itself. My blackout covers both the rate print and a buffer into the presser unless I have a written plan for that second window — which I almost never do as a scalper.

[PropScalpDesk]

Decision plus presser for me too. One thing about the schedule catches people: the ECB publishes at 13:15 London and the press conference starts at 13:45, and in between, on a Thursday, US weekly jobless claims come out at 13:30. So the gap between the two ECB windows is often not quiet at all. EURUSD can make a clean move on claims that looks like the market digesting the ECB, and then turn round as soon as the opening statement is read.

I treat 13:10 to about 14:30 as one block on ECB Thursdays. When a US release sits in that window as well, I don't even plan the afternoon; I reopen with a fresh checklist or not at all.