Speaking of NFP nights, I decided to do a little fundamental work for a change, & took a look at the stats in USDJPY movement in the week leading up to and followig US NFP nights. It's only early work, but I thought the results were interesting - see table below:
Basically, if you were happy to average your results over a 12 month period, you could do quite well simply going long 1 week before the NFP and exiting the long position before the close of NFP night trading, and you could do even better by simply going short prior to the close of NFP night trading and exiting the short position a week later.
Overall, in the last 2 years (24 months) there were 18 out of 24 months (75%) where the lead-up week gained overall a total of 788 pips or average of 33 pips per week.
And in the follow-up week, the stats weren't quite as biased %-wise (there were 15 losing weeks (62.5%) and 9 gaining weeks (37.5%)), but the size of the losing weeks in pip terms far outweighed the winning weeks, so much so that in 2018 even though there were 7 gaining weeks and 5 losing weeks, there was a net loss for the year of -126.2 pips (in 2017 the overall loss in the following week was -1370.6 pips).
Interesting enough results that I might expand the database in terms of # of months, but also for other USD cross rates, and for other key dates (RBA, BOE, ECB monthly statements, etc).
I notice this week is one of those few weeks where the USDJPY is losing ground in the lead-up to NFP, but I'm willing to bet (I might put a small trade on for interest sake) that next week the USDJPY will close up.
