This article is a continuation from previous Big Ben Strategy post

The logic
As mentioned, the pound/dollar rate tends to have lower trading volume outside European/London trading hours because the majority of GBP/USD spot deals are worked through U.K. and European dealers. This gives the European/British interbank community tremendous insight into the currency pair’s actual supply-demand picture. The

Big Ben trade sets up when interbank dealing desks use this intelligence to trigger stops on both sides of the market, resulting in new intraday highs and lows. Once these orders are cleared from the books, the market is primed for its first real directional move of the day, which is what the strategy is designed to capture.

The logic behind this trade should be familiar to S&P futures traders, as it is similar to many opening-range breakout strategies used to capitalize on the first real move of the day after the cash stock market opens in New York.

Trade examples
F i g u re 2 shows a prototypical Big Ben trade on a five-minute chart. The first vertical line marks midnight ET. The second vertical line denotes the Frankfurt open and the third line shows when London players begin entering the market.

When the Frankfurt market opened, the pound/dollar first moved lower, taking out any nearby sell stops. Within 15 minutes of London entering the picture, however, the market reversed to the upside. The pair was now free to make the first real directional move of the day, and it fell 90 pips before buyers stepped in.

Figure 3 illustrates a variation of the Big Ben strategy that commonly occur when there is an abnormally wide opening range. In this case, the pound traded up 26 pips after the London open to 1.8583, establishing the top of its range. It then came under pressure and sold off 65 pips to make a low of 1.8518 (horizontal line). Next, the currency traded up 50 pips before reversing and plunging below the former low. In this case, a trader could still justify entering a position, since the basic principles behind the trade were still present.

The Big Ben currency day-trading strategy allows you to limit initial risk and capture good moves early in the London trading session. The product of years of watching the currency markets, the approach is based on the workings of the global forex market and attempts to exploit its structure.(by Kristian Kerr)

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