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Most traders know the SNB for 2015. Fewer know that the bank has regular quarterly decisions on Thursdays at 9:30 Zurich time, and that CHF pairs show unusual quietness beforehand, followed by sudden activity.

On decision days, EURCHF and USDCHF might show tightening ranges in the preceding hours, then spike. The liquidity in the franc is concentrated in few banks, and when they pull back, the book thins noticeably.

Other days, Swiss data like CPI or the KOF indicator can have a similar if smaller effect. The market in these pairs is sensitive to small surprises.

Another quirk is the quote behavior. CHF pairs can have fewer ticks per minute than EUR or GBP pairs. A scalper may see long pauses with no quotes, then a jump.

For a short-term approach, the main lessons are to know the decision calendar for the SNB, and to treat the hours around it as thin, with larger-than-usual gap risk on stops.

Looking at past SNB decision days, and the 30-minute range before and after, shows whether the pre-event quiet is a consistent pattern or not.

How have Swiss franc pairs behaved in the hours before the last few central bank decisions?

I noticed this before the last couple of SNB decisions while watching EURCHF. The morning ranges were tiny, maybe a few pips across several hours, and the quotes came in slowly with long gaps between ticks. It felt more like a holiday than the morning of a central bank meeting.

Then the release came and the pair jumped through what had looked like a tidy range in one go. My stop on a small position filled noticeably worse than where I'd placed it, because there was simply nobody quoting in between. The franc book really does feel thin compared with the euro or the pound against the dollar.

Since then I keep the SNB calendar in my diary and avoid holding anything in CHF pairs through the announcement. I also stay out of the quiet hours before it, because the calm makes it tempting to fade small moves, and that's exactly when a sudden gap does the most damage.