Euro local hours

Checked October 2026

The local-hours pattern sells the euro from the European morning into the New York open, then buys it through the New York afternoon. Breedon and Ranaldo published the intraday pattern in 2013. Backtoast ran it on euro-dollar. The published version failed our test, losing 5.6% a year over 2,595 trades.

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Euro local hours

The paper finds a currency tends to weaken during its own working hours. So the short runs from 7:00 a.m. London to 8:00 a.m. New York, and the long from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. New York, every weekday with no stop.

FX fix reversal also trades the dollar by the clock, around the benchmark rate-setting times.

When it works

The edge in each session is small, so it pays only at interbank spreads like the EBS ones in the paper, and even there it held after costs on euro-dollar and not on the five other pairs. Breedon and Ranaldo tie it to order flow, because traders tend to be net buyers of foreign currency in their own working hours. The paper reports the morning short and the afternoon long separately, and a draft can test one leg alone before you spend a full test.

Origins

Breedon and Ranaldo reported 6% a year for the morning short and 7% for the afternoon long on EUR/USD from 1997 to 2007, after the spreads on EBS, the interbank platform, and losses after costs on the other five pairs they tested. The run is from late 2021 to October 2026.

The run is Backtoast's, from 29 October 2026, after costs.