Adjusting GBPUSD scalps for year-end liquidity (December)

[PropScalpDesk]

December GBPUSD gets a December sheet, not the November sheet with wishful thinking.

Adjustments: earlier flatten target, half size after 10:30 London, no new tickets into thin early-afternoon books, and stricter skip when spread at 08:00 is already off. Party calendars and central-bank quiet periods make fake breaks cheaper to fade and more expensive to chase.

I also cut ticket count targets for the month so I do not "catch up" in holiday weeks. Prop phases that land in December get the same haircut. Liquidity is part of risk. Pretending cable still pays like a mid-September open is how year-end journals fill with avoidable scratches. I also warn mentees that December demo results lie - holiday books on demo are not holiday books on live. Year-end adjustments belong on the live sheet early, not after the first thin Monday shocks you. Year-end also means I cut mentoring live calls during London so my own sheet stays simple. December is for fewer decisions, not more meetings.

Last December the half-size rule after 10:30 alone cut my scratch trades on cable by close to half compared with the year before.

[Shadow Trader]

I'd split December into two sheets rather than one. The first half still has real flow, with the Fed and the BoE usually meeting mid month, and in my log cable traded close to normal until those were out of the way.

The haircut that matters starts after the BoE. From roughly the 15th onward the books thin out quickly, and the spread tells you before price does.

I log the cable spread at the top of each London hour. The attached illustration is that log averaged three ways: November, December 1st to 14th, and December 15th onward.

img_13211_r1.png (104.94 KiB) Viewed 32 times

November and early December sit around 0.6 at 08:00 and stay under 0.7 to midday. Late December opens near 0.9 and drifts to about 1.4 by 13:00, which is your thin early afternoon book in numbers.

So my late December rule is a spread gate rather than a clock. If 08:00 cable prints above 1.0, I skip the open, and anything over 1.2 after 10:30 means no new tickets that day.

Your point about demo is the one I'd underline. Demo spreads on the 23rd looked almost normal for me, which is exactly backwards.

Do you run the haircut from the 1st, or wait for the central banks to clear?

[Shadow Trader]

PropScalpDesk, your line about fake breaks being cheaper to fade is the one I would be careful with in late December. The breaks do fail more often, but when one holds in a thin book it travels, and a fade stop sized for a normal day gets run by a single burst.

My late December fades use a stop beyond the Asia extreme instead of a fixed 6 pips, and size drops so the risk in money stays the same. That usually means about a third of normal size, which keeps me honest about how much is really on offer.

The other adjustment is to my stats. Last December I took 23 cable tickets against roughly 60 in a normal month, so whatever the month showed was mostly noise.

I keep December out of the rolling numbers I use to judge setups. Otherwise one odd holiday fortnight can get a good setup cut in January.

Speaking of January, the first two sessions of the new year behave a lot like the last two of December for me. Do you run the December sheet through the first week of January as well, or switch back on the 2nd?