The spread has a pulse, and it beats on the hour and half hour
Posted: Sat Oct 31, 2026 11:16 am
Log the spread every second for a week and plot it by minute of the hour. A faint sawtooth tends to appear, with small bumps around :00 and :30 that have nothing to do with news.
Several things line up on those marks. Plenty of scheduled data releases land at the top or bottom of the hour. Option expiries and fixings cluster around round times. Algorithms that rebalance on timers fire together, and liquidity providers often refresh or reprice their streams on a schedule. Any of these can thin the book for a moment even when nothing dramatic follows.
The bumps are usually small, a fraction of a pip on a major, which is exactly why they matter to a scalper who is aiming at two or three pips. An entry stamped at 14:00:02 can cost noticeably more than the same entry at 14:01:30.
Whether the pattern shows up depends on the broker, the pair and the session, so treat it as something to measure and not something to assume.
Does a pulse like this show up on the pairs and brokers traded here, or has the spread been flat through the turn of the hour?
Several things line up on those marks. Plenty of scheduled data releases land at the top or bottom of the hour. Option expiries and fixings cluster around round times. Algorithms that rebalance on timers fire together, and liquidity providers often refresh or reprice their streams on a schedule. Any of these can thin the book for a moment even when nothing dramatic follows.
The bumps are usually small, a fraction of a pip on a major, which is exactly why they matter to a scalper who is aiming at two or three pips. An entry stamped at 14:00:02 can cost noticeably more than the same entry at 14:01:30.
Whether the pattern shows up depends on the broker, the pair and the session, so treat it as something to measure and not something to assume.
Does a pulse like this show up on the pairs and brokers traded here, or has the spread been flat through the turn of the hour?