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Friday afternoons have a reputation for strange price action. On raw spread accounts, where you see the underlying spread directly, the deterioration can be stark.

Checklist for Friday from 15:00 UK:

• Is the spread on your main pair still within 1.5x its London average?
• Is US data out of the way? Friday data at 13:30 can set the tone for the whole afternoon.
• Are you holding anything that would hurt if Monday gapped against it?
• Have you hit your weekly target or limit? If yes, the week is done.
• Is there any weekend event (election, G7/G20 meeting, OPEC) that could make Monday unpredictable?

As the afternoon goes on, liquidity providers reduce size and some withdraw. By 20:00–21:00 UK, spreads on crosses and metals can be several times their usual level. Market orders fill worse, stops slip further.

A common rule is a hard last entry time (16:00 or 17:00 UK on Fridays) with all positions closed by 18:00.

When do you stop trading on Fridays? Has it changed since you started?

Spreads don't just widen at rollover. On Friday, there's a slow upward slope in cost starting a couple of hours before the New York close. Liquidity providers in Europe have gone home, US desks are cutting risk, and nobody wants to be caught with inventory over the weekend.

The slope is gentle, which is why it gets missed. A pair that costs 0.3 pips at noon may be at 0.6 by 3pm and 1.2 by 4:30. Averages hide it, but a log of spreads by the hour shows it clearly.

Late Friday also has another trait: price action gets jumpy. Small orders move price more than they would on Tuesday. Moves look like trends and then stall.

For a scalper, the practical effect is that the same setup is worth less. Lower expected return, higher cost, and a higher chance of weird spikes.

Plenty of experienced traders quietly stop on Friday around the London close, and the habit rarely gets mentioned. Not out of laziness. The numbers just don't support continuing.

One interesting way to check how hard it hits: compute the average spread for each half hour from noon to the close on Fridays, then do the same for Tuesdays. Subtract. The gap is the Friday surcharge. On some brokers it's tiny, and on others it reaches several times the normal cost by the final hour.

A secondary effect is the way stops behave. Late Friday, quotes can be sparse, and a stop sitting near a recent low gets hit by a single quote update that would barely register on Tuesday. The market looks calm, then a vertical wick appears, then calm again. For short-term trading, the late Friday hours deliver the worst combination of higher cost and lower reliability.

At what hour on Fridays does trading stop being worth it on the pairs followed here?