Conventional wisdom: "Don't trade bank holidays — volume is too low." So I tested it. Every UK bank holiday. Every US federal holiday. 2023 through 2025. GBPUSD only. Same pullback strategy across all days.
| Day Type | Trades | Win Rate | Profit Factor |
|---|---|---|---|
| Normal Trading Days | 180 | 52% | 1.64 |
| UK Bank Holiday | 24 | 29% | 0.51 |
| US Bank Holiday | 22 | 36% | 0.78 |
| Both UK + US Holiday | 4 | 25% | 0.22 |
The advice is right — but for the wrong reason. The problem isn't low volume. It's fakeouts. On UK holidays, GBPUSD candle wicks were 2.3x normal size. Price would break a level, trigger my entry, reverse, and run my stop — all within 8-10 candles. 71% of my holiday trades were stopped out. It wasn't quiet. It was deceptive.
On normal days, GBPUSD H1 wicks average 6-8 pips. On UK holidays, the average jumps to 16 pips. That's not noise — it's institutional desks running skeleton crews with wider spreads and algorithmic stop-hunting. The pullback strategy relies on clean retracements to levels. On holidays, price "retraces" through levels by 15 pips, triggers all the stops, then reverses. You lose even when you read the direction correctly.