Days that close almost exactly where they opened

[Fairman]

Days that close almost exactly where they opened

Some days, the pair moves a lot during the session and then finishes almost exactly where it started. A big range, but a tiny net change. On a daily chart it's a doji or close to one.

For a scalper, those days have a specific feel. Moves in both directions, often a decent push in London and then a full reversal in New York. Breakout traders get chopped. Fade traders can do well if the reversals happen at clear levels.

What's interesting is what tends to follow. A day that went nowhere after a wide range often shows indecision at that price, with both sides active. The next day can break out of that range with some energy, because one side has given up. Or it can be another rotation if nothing changes.

I don't try to predict which. What I do is mark the high and low of that round trip day clearly, because they tend to be important the next day. A break of either side, with a close beyond it on M15, usually tells you which side won the argument.

It also helps to note whether the round trip happened on news. If big data caused the swing and the market undid it, the data was probably shrugged off, and that's useful context for the next couple of sessions.

[Fairman]

Inside days often follow these round trip days, where the next day stays within the previous day's range. That compresses things further. When I see a wide doji followed by an inside day, I'm more alert to a range break in the following session, though I still wait to see which side goes. It's a pattern people have talked about for a long time on daily charts, and the intraday version, where the session ranges compress, often shows up on the same days. The levels from the doji day are the ones I'd watch.

[Fairman]

For journaling, tagging days by their daily candle type, like trend, round trip or inside, and then looking at your results per type is a useful exercise. Some scalpers find they do much better on round trip days because their setups are fades. Others do worse because they trade breakouts. Knowing which type suits you helps decide how much to trade on the next one. It also explains a lot of frustration on days that felt busy but went nowhere overall, which is normal for that kind of day. Even a rough tally over a couple of months tends to show whether round trip days hurt you more than trend days.

[FXS Prop Desk]

Those days are difficult for trend strategies but can suit range trading. Moves in both directions often reach the same areas, and fading extremes can work well.

The challenge is recognising them early. A day that has made a large range in both directions by midday, without a clear close beyond either extreme, is often heading for a doji-like close. Switching to range rules at that point can help.

[Fairman]

The intraday path of these days varies a lot, and it matters for what comes next. Some round trip days rally hard in London and fall all the way back in New York. Others drop first and recover. Both leave a doji on the daily chart, but the first suggests that late buyers got trapped at the highs, and the second suggests sellers got trapped at the lows. Looking at the H1 chart of the round trip day, and where the trapped side probably sits, gives a better idea of which direction might follow.

[Fairman]

Is the volume, or tick volume, on these days useful? A round trip day on high tick volume, maybe after news, means a lot of activity ended up going nowhere. That kind of day often marks real indecision and can come before a bigger move. A round trip on low tick volume, like a holiday or a quiet Friday, means less. It's just a slow day that happened to close near the open. I'd only give these days much weight when they came with real activity behind them, and I'd largely ignore them otherwise.