Today is Good Friday, resulting in closed markets and an empty calendar. The foreign exchange market remains open, though activity is expected to be minimal due to the holiday.
Traders can either take this opportunity to step away or enhance their trading knowledge. It’s important to remember that a trader’s role is not merely to trade daily, but to focus on profitability.
While today’s market closure offers a reprieve from live trading, it also presents a rare moment to pause and assess the current macro environment in a more thoughtful manner. With no major data releases and minimal price movement expected in forex due to thinned liquidity, it’s a quiet session—but not without purpose. These quieter moments encourage reflection on strategies that have or haven’t worked and allow us to recalibrate decisions with greater objectivity.
The point made earlier—that a trader’s responsibility is to be profitable rather than simply active—is particularly timely. It signals a reminder that effectiveness in this field comes from maintaining discipline in selectively engaging when conditions offer genuine opportunity. It’s easy to blur the lines between effort and productivity, but now would be a good moment to separate the two. As we look back over the last fortnight, volatility has surfaced in waves, and the temptation to act reactively has likely grown. However, stepping back, sharpening our focus, and waiting for higher-probability conditions is far more beneficial over the long term.
Markets have priced in numerous risks including rate outlooks and geopolitical frictions, leading to intermittent bursts in volume. However, holiday periods naturally compress liquidity and require that we lower expectations for clean entries or sustainable trends in shorter time frames. We should be alert to the fact that the reduced participation from large institutions typically distorts price action and can lead to false signals. This makes any impulse to over-trade even riskier.
Thompson, who recently flagged the importance of accounting for calendar effects as part of trade preparation, gives us a useful framework here. It supports the idea that during conditions like today, not participating might be the highest-value decision available. If we think of our capital as strategic rather than expendable, then ignoring marginal conditions is more a sign of strength than hesitation.
Also worth keeping in mind is what Martin observed earlier this week regarding the relationship between implied volatility and realised outcomes. If we follow that thinking, we know conditions are likely to shift again post-holiday as liquidity normalises. This suggests patience now could yield better setups within days, not weeks.
It would be wise to use this downtime to review trade receipts—not just performance, but also decision quality. Were we trading in alignment with our broader strategy, or simply in response to movement? Analysing that honestly reveals much more than P&L numbers ever could. Weak spots in risk management or inconsistent position sizing often show up in campaign summaries, and refining those small points makes a stark difference over time.
We’re always in a cycle of preparing, executing, and recovering. Today falls squarely into the first and third parts of that cycle. Use it. Put energy not into staring at empty price charts, but into reading, note-taking, or just stepping away entirely to return sharper. The value is in what we carry forward, not what we squeeze out of an illiquid session.
