What Happens in the Minute Before a Release

The minute before in five lines

The minute before a scheduled release is 15:29 on the feed's clock before a number at 15:30. The quotes thin out, as the banks that make the prices pull the ones nearest the middle. The spread, which is the gap between the price you buy at and the price you sell at, edges wider before the number rather than only at it. The price drifts in small moves, because there is no news yet to move on, and the orders queue: buy stops above, sell stops below, waiting for the number to pick one. On 9 January 2026 the euro against the dollar ran 6.7 pips in the 15:25 bar, where a pip is the fourth decimal place of the price, after five bars of 2 to 3, and then 30.4 in the minute of the number.

A stopwatch at 15:29:50

Here is the idea as a stopwatch at 15:29:50 with the last ten seconds shaded. The hand is not stopped; the market is not still. In those seconds the banks thin their quotes, the spread edges out, and the orders queue above and below the price, while the price itself only drifts, because nobody moves first on a number that is not out yet. At the top of the dial the number lands and the drift becomes the bar of the next paper. Everything on the left of the watch is what this paper is about: the arranging, not the move.

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