Why Sunday evening opens are a different market

[Fairman]

Why Sunday evening opens are a different market

The week opens on Sunday around 22:00 GMT, when Wellington and Sydney start. For the first hours, the market is thin and the platform feeds are reconnecting.

The result is erratic spreads and sharp small moves. A single mid-sized order can push the price several pips. Weekend news gets priced in with poor liquidity, so initial moves often overshoot and then retrace once Tokyo comes online.

For a scalper this is like trading in a different asset. The usual volatility estimates do not apply. Stops that normally sit outside the noise get hit by one-off prints. Some brokers also freeze their servers for a few minutes at the open while systems come up.

A rule used by many experienced scalpers is to skip the first hour after the weekly open entirely, and sometimes the first two. The cost of missing a few pips is smaller than the cost of a spread of five pips and a fill 3 pips off.

Another habit is checking the weekend news before the open so the gap is not a surprise.

What is the earliest hour after the weekly open at which fills start looking normal on the pairs being traded?