Quiet Mondays with an empty calendar: what London tends to do

[Fairman]

Weekend news can surprise on Mondays even with an empty calendar. Elections, policy announcements, geopolitical events or comments from officials over the weekend can make Monday anything but quiet. A quick check of the main headlines before the Asian open helps. If nothing happened, the quiet Monday pattern is more likely to hold. If something did, I'd treat the day like a news day, at least until London has had a chance to digest it and the first big moves are out of the way. A two minute scan of the headlines on Sunday evening is usually enough.

[FXS Prop Desk]

Battle of attrition is a good way to describe those Mondays. One practical consequence: on an empty-calendar Monday, the Friday late range is often the only real reference, so the distance from it matters more than usual. If London opens near the middle of it, there is little to trade until one edge is tested. If it opens near an edge, the first test is usually the cleanest setup of the day. Writing the Friday late high and low on the chart before the weekend, rather than on Monday morning, saves time and avoids redrawing levels after seeing the first move.

[Fairman]

Friday's late range acting as the frame on a quiet Monday matches what I see too. My favourite tell is that price keeps poking at the edges and failing. On EURUSD, if Friday's late range is 1.0820 to 1.0845 and London spends two hours between 1.0824 and 1.0841, I don't expect a breakout trade to go anywhere before New York.

So on those days I stop trading breakouts and either fade the edges with small targets or just sit. A fade from 1.0841 down to the middle at 1.0832 is 9 pips, with a stop 5 pips above the edge. At 0.5 lots that's 25 dollars risked for 45 dollars, but only if I'm quick to take it, because quiet days can turn on a single headline in thin conditions, as you mention.

I keep size around two thirds of normal. My worst Monday losses came from sizing up because it felt safe, then a surprise comment moved the pair 30 pips with nothing on the calendar.

Do you wait for something specific before treating the range as broken, like a full M15 close outside it? And do you look at Tuesday's calendar on Monday to judge whether the market is just waiting?

[FXS HongKong Scalper]

i reckon asia ranges can mislead, london still goes quiet.

Fair enough, on an empty-calendar Monday London often goes quiet whatever Asia did, so the Asia read adds less than it seems. Where it earns its place is the exception: a wide Asian range, or a gap that hasn't filled, usually means a weekend headline is still being priced, and that's the Monday London doesn't sit still. A holiday in Tokyo or Shanghai muddies it as well, because a small range then says more about who was missing than about the week.