ICT killzones

Markets are not equally active through the day. Activity rises when the large financial centres open and fades between them. A killzone is the part of a session where, in ICT's teaching, large participants are most likely to run liquidity and start the main move of the day.

A killzone is a filter of time, not a signal. It tells a trader when to watch the chart. What to trade is still decided by market structure and levels.

The times are given in New York local time. That is the convention ICT teaches in, and most indicators follow it.

• Asian killzone – 20:00 to 00:00.
• London killzone – 02:00 to 05:00.
• New York killzone – 07:00 to 10:00.
• London close killzone – 10:00 to 12:00.

These hours are a convention, not a rule of the market. Sources differ by an hour or two: some end the Asian window at 22:00, and index traders often use 08:30 to 11:00 for New York, around the 09:30 open of the stock market.

New York time follows daylight saving, so the windows move by an hour against UTC twice a year. The United States and the United Kingdom change clocks on different dates. For two to three weeks in March and about a week at the turn of October and November the London open comes an hour later than usual on a New York clock.

The Asian window covers the first hours of the Tokyo session. For the major currency pairs and for many other markets it is the quietest part of the day, and price often holds a narrow range. That range is the main product of the session: its high and low collect stop orders, and later sessions tend to trade through one of them. The pairs most active in these hours are the ones with the yen, the Australian dollar and the New Zealand dollar.

The London open brings the first large volume of the day. A common pattern is a move through the high or the low of the Asian range that fails – a liquidity sweep – followed by a move in the opposite direction. ICT calls the false first move the Judas swing. In a trending market the London killzone often sets the high or the low of the day.

The New York window overlaps with the London afternoon, and the main US economic data is released at 08:30 inside it. Price either continues the London move after a pullback or reverses it by taking the London high or low first. The London close window that follows is known for retracements, as traders in Europe close positions.

On Charts the Sessions with ICT Killzones indicator in the Sessions group draws these windows on the chart. The guide to trading sessions covers session hours in general.

• Before the session – mark the Asian high and low, the previous day's high and low, and the direction of the 4-hour or daily chart.
• Inside the killzone – wait for price to take one of those levels and reject it.
• Confirmation – a market structure shift on a lower timeframe in the new direction.
• Entry – on the return to the fair value gap or the order block left by that move.
• Stop – beyond the extreme of the sweep. Target – the opposite side of the Asian range, then the previous day's high or low.
• No setup inside the window – no trade. The next killzone is a few hours away.

• Treating the window as a signal – time adds nothing without a level and a reaction at it.
• Wrong time zone – check that the chart or the indicator is set to New York time, and recheck after daylight saving changes.
• Trading every killzone – most methods pick one or two sessions that fit the instrument.
• Ignoring the calendar – a data release inside the window can run both sides of the range within minutes.