Do Mondays Start Quiet? Range by Weekday for the Majors
Compare the Monday bar with the others in the chart: it shows the average daily range of Monday against a normal day of the same pair, for the seven majors together.
The week begins in Sydney on Sunday evening, when little has happened for two days, and traders say the Monday morning is slow. The table is the test: is Monday’s daily range smaller than the rest of the week?
The week across the seven major pairs
Over the last 90 days the busiest weekday across the seven major pairs was Wednesday (1.20 times a normal day) and the quietest was Tuesday (0.82).
Symbol by symbol
| Symbol | Busiest weekday | Quietest weekday |
|---|---|---|
| EUR/USD | Friday | Tuesday |
| GBP/USD | Wednesday | Monday |
| USD/JPY | Thursday | Tuesday |
| USD/CHF | Wednesday | Tuesday |
| AUD/USD | Wednesday | Monday |
| USD/CAD | Wednesday | Monday |
| NZD/USD | Wednesday | Monday |
The weekday is only one layer. The same weekday has quiet and busy hours, and the hour table in the dashboard shows all 24 for every weekday of any symbol.
How to read the weekday numbers
Each bar compares one weekday with the average weekday of the same pair, so 1.0 is a normal day. A weekday at 1.15 moves 15% more than usual, and one at 0.85 moves 15% less. Averaging over several pairs smooths out one-off events of a single pair, but not events that hit all pairs at once, such as a US jobs report.
Why weekdays differ
The calendar is the main reason. Central bank decisions and the big data releases fall on some weekdays more than others in a given month, Monday begins after a weekend of news with a thin market, and Friday ends with position closing before the weekend. These effects are real but small compared with the difference between hours of the same day, so look at the weekday and the hour together.
Check it for your symbol
The dashboard shows the weekday table for any symbol, with the number of days behind each value. A weekday with only three or four days counted is a hint, not a pattern.
How to check this in Currenlyzer
- Open the symbol in the analyzer. The hour table starts with today’s weekday.
- Choose the weekday you trade and the history: 7 days are open to everyone, 14, 30 and 60 days come with a free account.
- Look at the number of days counted under each hour. An hour with few days is a hint, not a pattern.
How we count
The numbers come from the live price feed of Currenlyzer: one-minute prices are built into hourly and daily candles, all in UTC. The range of a candle is its high minus its low. We use finished candles only, and we leave out hours when the market is closed and days that are too thin to count (the first hours of the Sunday open, short holiday days), so a closed hour is never averaged in as zero. Averages cover the last 30 days for the daily range and the last 60 days for hours, unless the text says otherwise. Pips follow the dashboard: one pip is 0.0001 on most pairs, 0.01 on yen pairs and 0.10 on gold. The same method is used in the dashboard.
Frequently asked questions
Is Monday the quietest day?
Compare the bars. The weekday with the lowest bar over the last 90 days is the quietest.
Is Monday morning quiet?
The first hours of the week are thin; the dashboard shows each hour of Monday separately.
Does it hold for gold and indices?
Not always. See the weekday article for other symbols.
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Historical statistics for information only. This is not investment advice and not a recommendation to buy or sell. Past patterns do not predict future moves. Trading leveraged products carries a high risk of loss. Read the full disclaimer.