Anyone noticed NZD spikes/spread widening at 20 UTC each day?

Hi fellow traders,

I have been seeing strange spikes in all NZD pairs at exactly the same time (20 UTC) every day. I thought it was only my broker (AxiTrader) but noticed in 2 other brokers as well, even though the spikes are not as wild as in Axi.

I have been noticing it for a while, but today I actually had live trades and they all got stopped out way beyond my SL level within a split second, exactly at 20 UTC, with no news at that time, and then the market just went back to where it was.

See attached screenshot.

Anyone else noticed this? Any idea what's going on? The spikes happen only in NZD - all cross pairs.

Broker Swap time?

YES, has been mentioned many times, it's Rollover time when they calculate your Swap and statements for the day.

Check your broker details, or look at the Specifications for times the market is actually CLOSED

Most will happen at 5 pm New York time all year around

Good Luck

Thank you for the replies - I am well aware of swap fees break, which happens at 00 UTC not 20 UTC.

See the screenshot of AUDNZD - second spike is market close/reopen at 00 UTC. First spike happened 4 hours earlier in only NZD pairs - all of them. Exactly for 1 minute. This has been happening for weeks.

So while swap fees/rollover would be a nice explanation, it does not quite fit here.

These happen because of the broker spread spikes . My broker publishes the data eg : https://www1.oanda.com/forex-trading/markets/recent

As you can see they occur daily when the NY is closing and liquidity is low.

Thank you for your reply!

I understand that spread spikes occur, especially around news events and daily close/swap fees calculation time. However, I am still curious why only NZD pairs have a spread spike at 1PM NY time on most days, in all brokers that I watch, live as well as demo accounts. There are no news events at that time most of the time. This week the spikes in all NZD pairs happened on Mon, Wed and Thu, lasting exactly 1 minute, exactly at 1PM NY (8pm broker time/UTC).

I am trading for 15+ years and have never seen anything like this. Within my system I watch all 8 major currencies and 28 crosses between them on daily basis. I started noticing this spikes about 8-10 weeks ago. I have never seen this before.

I remember that banks would not increase the spreads overnight very much - I think they started doing it after SNB Jan 15 2015 fiasco. So I adjusted my trading to avoid any short term trades around daily market close/reopen. But this NZD spike is a recent event that wasn't happening until very recently.

My broker is currently investigating the issue. I do not expect them to restore my trades, that's not a big deal really. I just want to figure out what is happening with NZD at that time, on regular basis, exactly for 1 minute.

Today, for example, the spike did not happen. But it did happen yesterday, as you can see on the attached screenshot. Compare it to the expected spike 4 hours later, at the solid vertical line, which is 00 UTC market close/reopen.

Now that you have explained in detail with the New York time, yes, I see what you are talking about.

Definitely, something going on there; wonder if the time corresponds to something in New Zealand perhaps?

And a comment about the stop levels in the charts in Post 1 -

When that happened to me many times, of course, everyone says that is the spread, but after much reflection on these,

I wonder why doesn't the candle go there? Well, it's the spread they say, accept and move on...

But, the price went there, it traded there obviously, so why the candle doesn't show that...???

Aw, it's the spread, forget about it...

Really, that's all they got for me...

I used to have an OANDA demo so I still get the emails from them; looks like they recognize the problem.


and another example, note the time at the bottom scale

EURNZD the same

Yep, happens at 10PM for me