Weekday FX turning points and close run tests

Measure the series before writing a rule

TradersWeek editorial: treat weekday extremes and next-session close direction as classroom hypotheses. The first task is to measure whether currency daily ranges concentrate and whether signed closes behave like independent runs, before any seasonal trading entry rule is written.

A runs test counts whether successive signed closes persist or reverse more often than an independence baseline would imply, using ordered daily direction over a fixed lookback. Hypothesis testing compares those counts, and weekday turning-point rates, with an explicit quantitative baseline. Seasonal trading remains a later, calendar-conditioned procedure that would use weekday identity as market state when testing weekly-extreme and next-day continuation rules as one evaluable sequence.

How concentrated were daily ranges

In the 1999-2004 EUR/USD daily sample, most daily ranges stayed at or below 1.5 percent of that day's average price, with only isolated observations above 5 percent. The daily range is the session high-to-low distance expressed as a percent of that day's average price.

Daily EUR/USD percent changes in that sample clustered inside about 1 percent either side of zero, while the largest one-day moves exceeded 2 percent. Lengthening the EUR/USD percent-change window to five days widened the distribution, but not by a factor of five, and most five-day outcomes still sat inside about 2 percent either way.

Which weekdays posted weekly turning points

A weekly turning point is a session that posts the week high, the week low, or both. Across the tabulated dollar pairs, Monday and Friday posted a weekly high, weekly low, or both at least half the time in almost every case, while Tuesday through Thursday did not.

EUR/USD recorded a weekly extreme on 57 percent of Mondays and 57 percent of Fridays, versus midweek rates near one quarter to one third of weeks. Hypothesis testing can compare those weekday rates with a uniform weekday turning-point rate over the same interval.

Did signed closes behave like independent runs

The continuation rate is the share of cases in which the next session closes in the same direction as the prior session. Same-direction close continuation from one weekday to the next sat near 50 percent for most pairs, so a simple directional run rarely departed far from an even split in that sample.

The standout sequential reading was USD/CAD from Monday to Tuesday: 38 percent continuation, equal to a 62 percent reversal frequency in that sample. A runs test of ordered daily direction asks whether that persistence or reversal departs from an independence baseline.

What these counts do not write

TradersWeek editorial: these classroom checks stop at the ordered series. They do not assemble a seasonal trading entry, exit, and abstention sequence from the Monday and Friday turning-point rates or from any one-pair continuation reading.