forex-scalping.com

Other fixing times scattered through the day

Several fixings occur in addition to the well-known ones. The ECB publishes a reference rate at 14:15 CET. Central banks in various countries set official rates at different times. Corporate and fund flows are matched to these rates.

Each fixing creates a local bump in order flow. A few minutes before, price may drift toward a level. After the fix, it often returns.

None of them is as pronounced as the London 4 p.m. fix, but a pair active in their region will show something. USDCNH reacts to the daily midpoint set by the People's Bank of China, announced at 01:15 GMT. The gap between the midpoint and the market rate is closely watched.

For a scalper in a related pair, a calendar of fixings helps explain odd moves that appear without news. A moment of strange behaviour at a regular time is usually a fix.

Which fixing times have been noticed on the pairs being traded, and are they marked on the chart?

The 4pm London fix is the best known benchmark, but there are several other reference rates set at different times. The Tokyo fix at 9:55am Tokyo time is widely used by Japanese banks and companies. The European Central Bank publishes daily euro reference rates each afternoon, which are used for many official and contractual purposes. Several other central banks publish their own reference rates at set times, and some emerging market currencies have fixings that matter a lot for local flows. Around each of these times, there can be bursts of activity as participants execute orders tied to the benchmark, which can produce brief moves or spread changes in the relevant pairs.

I mark the fixings on my charts with thin vertical lines, and the one that surprised me most was the ECB reference rate around 14:15 CET. On EURUSD I saw a small drift in the ten minutes before and then a snap back, which on most days was only about two or three pips but was consistent enough that I stopped fading it.

The Tokyo fix at 9:55 is quieter for the pairs I trade, but on USDJPY I noticed that price tends to lean toward round numbers just before it, especially at month end. I stopped taking breakout entries in the final five minutes before it because they kept failing.

What helped most was keeping a plain note in my journal whenever a strange move happened at an odd time. After a couple of months I could match about half of those moves to a fix or a calendar event. The rest I simply labelled unknown, and that honesty made my review much cleaner.