Do not hold a scalp into the fix
Posted: Sat Oct 31, 2026 8:41 am
Scheduled benchmark fixings, especially the afternoon one in London, are a quiet but real source of ugly price behaviour. In the minutes around the fix, large client orders get executed, and price can move in a sharp, short burst that has nothing to do with the setup on your chart. It frequently retraces afterwards.
For a scalper holding a three to six pip target, a burst of ten or fifteen pips either way in a short window is a coin flip with slippage on top. If the trade is in profit, a spike against it may take the stop. If the trade is flat, it may take both the entry area and the spread-widened exit.
A simple rule many traders keep: no new entries in the several minutes before the fix, and flatten or tighten whatever is open. Afterwards, wait for the spread to normalise before looking for setups.
Check it rather than trusting it. Mark the fix times on your chart for a month, and look at what price did in the window around them on the pairs you trade. Then check how many of your worst losing trades overlap the window. The pattern varies by pair and by day of the month, so do not assume it is identical everywhere.
Which fix or scheduled flow window has caught your trades most often, and on which pair?
For a scalper holding a three to six pip target, a burst of ten or fifteen pips either way in a short window is a coin flip with slippage on top. If the trade is in profit, a spike against it may take the stop. If the trade is flat, it may take both the entry area and the spread-widened exit.
A simple rule many traders keep: no new entries in the several minutes before the fix, and flatten or tighten whatever is open. Afterwards, wait for the spread to normalise before looking for setups.
Check it rather than trusting it. Mark the fix times on your chart for a month, and look at what price did in the window around them on the pairs you trade. Then check how many of your worst losing trades overlap the window. The pattern varies by pair and by day of the month, so do not assume it is identical everywhere.
Which fix or scheduled flow window has caught your trades most often, and on which pair?