EURUSD plan for a Fed speaker day, I'm trading the reaction and nothing before it

[Fairman]

EURUSD plan for a Fed speaker day, I'm trading the reaction and nothing before it

posting before the session. Fed speaker scheduled for the NY morning and the calendar has a couple of lesser releases before it. EURUSD, M5 for levels, M1 for entries.

London has been a slow grind with a clean range forming between two obvious levels. My plan is to not trade into the speaker at all. Spreads widen, headlines are unpredictable, and a scalp stop is a gift to anyone with a fast feed. I'll flatten anything open before the scheduled time.

After the speech, I wait for the dust to settle, usually fifteen to twenty minutes, and then see where price is relative to the London range. If it broke out and holds outside on a couple of M5 closes, I'll look for a pullback entry in that direction. If it spiked and came back inside, I fade toward the other side of the range. If it's just chopping, I'm done.

Size is small today. Will update here as it goes.

[Fairman]

Small note on why I flatten before a speaker instead of just tightening stops. A tight stop on a headline spike is not protection, it is a guaranteed fill at a worse price than you planned once spreads widen. I would rather be out completely and miss the move than be in with a stop that gets slipped. Speakers are worse than data in a way, because there is no exact second the news lands. The market reacts to a single sentence somewhere in the middle of a speech and you cannot plan for that.

[Fairman]

The thing I keep reminding myself on days like this is that no trade is a fine outcome. If the speaker says nothing new, price often just keeps rotating in the London range and there is nothing worth doing after. I used to feel like I had to find something because I had prepared for it. Now I treat the prep as useful either way, since knowing where the London range sits helps me read the next session even if I never click a button today.