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Myth: the London and New York overlap always has the tightest spreads

Common belief says the overlap is the best time to scalp because liquidity is deepest. Plausible, and mostly right for EURUSD. Less right for everything else.

Check a few pairs. USDJPY often prints its tightest spreads in the Tokyo session, when Asian banks are active and the pair is the local favourite. AUDUSD can be cleaner in the early Sydney and Tokyo hours than at 13:00 GMT. EURGBP tends to be best when London is open and New York has barely started.

And even for EURUSD the overlap includes the big data releases at 13:30 GMT. Spread tightness is an average. Around the release it can be ten times wider for a few seconds.

So the tidy rule of "scalp the overlap" becomes "scalp the pair in its home session, away from scheduled releases". That shifts the plan from one time window to a rotating schedule by pair.

The way to verify is recording spreads per pair per hour for a couple of weeks. A spreadsheet with a pivot table will show where each pair is cheapest.

Which pair and hour combination turned out cheaper than expected after measuring, instead of assuming?

When I actually recorded spreads by hour for a month, the surprise for me was EURGBP in the early London morning. Between about 7:00 and 9:00 GMT it was tighter than at any point during the overlap, and the moves were cleaner too. By the time New York was fully in, it had gone sluggish and the spread had drifted wider again.

USDJPY was the other one. I'd always assumed the overlap was its best window, but the late Tokyo session gave me spreads just as tight with a lot less of the whipsaw that comes with US data. I now do a short block on it before London opens and leave it alone in the afternoon.

The spreadsheet approach really is the way to settle this. It took me maybe fifteen minutes a day to log it, and it changed my whole timetable from one long window into short sessions per pair.

Scandinavian currencies trade well during European hours and badly afterward. After the New York morning, spreads on USDSEK and USDNOK balloon, and quotes can freeze for several seconds.

The pairs are small in global terms, so a single mid-sized order can push price several points. They also have a habit of reacting to oil (NOK) and to European risk sentiment (SEK), which makes them move in ways that look inconsistent unless the broader context is checked.

A typical pattern: calm drift through Asia, active moves in the London morning, and then a sudden jump at an odd time as a local bank adjusts a large position. There's rarely a headline.

Since the pip values and swaps differ from the majors, some platforms display contract specs that look odd, and lot size conversions can surprise people.

For scalping, these pairs might offer decent movement but the all-in cost can be heavy outside the best two or three hours. A realistic expectation is that a strategy only works during overlapping European hours.

Anyone traded USDNOK or USDSEK, and how did the spread behave at 6pm New York?