Easter is today but it feels as if holiday was over already. I have house guests, although it is difficult to entertain them, since my schedule is so much different than theirs. They will probably stay in bed till noon, while I’ve been up for hours now. Nuts. Next year I’m going on vacation at this time.
Friday was very boring as far as currency trading was concerned, as expected. The so called “Banking holiday” makes for an uneventfully day trading anything, especially in absence of big time, surprising news. Historically, this is the norm. On the same token, Monday after Easter tends to be much more active. Things tend to pick up dramatically, at least that has been the case for nine out of last 10 years or so. No reason to believe this one should be different.
Normally when markets open after the weekend I tend to focus on Yen crosses. I will not be able to watch the early trading, because of my obligations as a host, so no gap trades or following the JPY until 6-7 hours into the trading day. But I will test markets volatility with a small USD-CHF trade. Just want to see if it will indeed follow the annual pattern.

This is how this pair behaved last year. Notice the difference between Good Friday and the Monday after. While I have an opinion what the market might do next, I want to make a play without a directional bias.

I placed two trades, one sell and one buy. Each one has a fixed 50 pips stop, and 100 pips take profit. If the T/P is not reached by the time Europe opens, I will remove it and replace with some kind of trailing stop. No matter what happens these orders will expire no later than noon EST Monday. After that back to business as usual.

Mike K.