London Highs and Lows in the New York Session

A London trader leaves two lines on a chart and writes, “New York should take the high.” An hour later the high is gone, but the trader at the desk cannot tell whether that happened before or after the handoff. A correct forecast would still be an unusable instruction.

A good handoff is a small historical record: what London delivered, what remains unvisited, when that record was frozen, and what New York must do before an entry is eligible. This lesson builds that record in a way a second trader can reproduce.

Definition and chart context: London-to-New York handoff

Imagine closing your London chart and handing another person one index card. It should include the frozen session high and low, timestamp of each, price side, first subsequent visit, and anything cancelled in the interval. Without the intervening history a New York trader can draw the correct rectangle and still assign a second touch the wrong status.

For the ICT background, see Intraday Profiles. The worksheets below use stated study rules for measurement, confirmation and simulated fills. Those choices let you reproduce the examples; they are not claims that a public candle identifies the owner, size or intent of an institutional order.

Why this distinction matters

Knowing whether London expanded, swept and reversed, or spent the morning rotating tells the incoming trader what kind of continuation or reversal would be meaningful. A fresh New York sweep of an untouched London high is distinct from a third retest of a high already raided during the transition. The unfinished daily candle makes both cases look similar if all the timestamps are removed.

How to identify it before the next candle

Save three fields: the frozen price, the time it first formed, and the time of the latest visit after the observation window. Do this for both sides. Keep the high of the whole European morning as a different field if needed. It may exceed the price you froze at 05:00 New York. Never use the final London close to reconstruct the map that was available at the start of New York.

Use a half-open interval on the chosen clock. On a five-minute chart whose stamps show the start of the bar, a 04:55 New York bar finishes the 02:00 to 05:00 sample. The 05:00 bar belongs to the handoff. If the platform shows closing timestamps, the labels shift although the physical observations do not. Verify this on one day before comparing twenty.

What must travel from London to the New York desk?

Freeze a hypothetical high at 1.10362 and low at 1.09984 at 10 AM Ghana standard-time conversion. At 11:36 GMT the bid touches 1.10379 and returns to 1.10318. At noon, the high should read “already crossed by 1.7 pips”; the low still reads “unvisited since cutoff.” A later trade above 1.10362 may be a retest of the old zone but cannot be the first run through the London high. If the only note says to sell the first run after noon, distinguish first since noon from first since the range formed.

Keep days with an active London position separate from days starting flat. Holding a runner into New York is a management decision. Opening a new trade is an entry decision. They can point the same way yet place very different money at risk. Add a field for aggregate exposure when both decisions are possible.

How to trade the idea in a paper replay

Give the incoming session a conditional instruction. If the intact high is taken into a pre-existing premium array and the tape displaces down, study the first returning sell setup. If upward delivery holds outside the range and the planned downside destination is no longer credible, cancel the reversal. A completed London signal that expired before New York cannot be transferred as a fresh pending order without a new rule.

The two replays use constructed five-minute candles and a controlled order model shared across this workbook series. Keeping the execution pattern comparable lets you isolate what the featured concept changes: the reference, the eligibility decision, or the management rule. These selected paths illustrate mechanics. They are not historical signals or a sample from which to estimate a winning percentage.

A session clock you can reconstruct in Accra

Start by writing the clock in the margin. Accra uses GMT throughout the year. A session definition expressed in New York time moves by one hour on a Ghana clock when New York enters or leaves daylight saving time. A session expressed in London local time follows London instead. European and US changes need not occur on the same weekend. A saved template labelled London is not evidence of which clock its author used.

For a concrete conversion, take a New York clock reading of 02:00. In US standard time Accra reads 07:00; in US daylight time it reads 06:00. Thus a 02:00 to 05:00 New York London Kill Zone appears as 07:00 to 10:00 GMT in winter or 06:00 to 09:00 in summer. The 07:00 to 10:00 New York window becomes noon to 15:00 GMT in winter and 11:00 to 14:00 in summer. A school worksheet that deliberately uses fixed GMT hours is a different convention. Label it as such.

The same conversion places New York midnight at 05:00 GMT in winter or 04:00 GMT in summer. That is not the start of every broker day. A vendor using a New York close day can start a new trading day in the Ghana evening, hours before the New York midnight reference. One vertical line cannot quietly serve as both boundaries. If your session crosses midnight locally, write the full date on both ends rather than treating the interval as a negative number of hours.

Before replay, find one known UTC timestamp on the feed. Compare it with the platform clock and the intended market clock, then check another date in the opposite season. Record the opening timestamp of the first included bar and the first excluded bar. This makes a session marking portable: a trader opening the same feed in Kumasi and another using a different display timezone should select the same physical quotes. For the paired illustrations in this lesson, timestamps use a standard-time practice clock.

Check seasonal offsets against the Ghana clock record and the New York clock record for the year being tested. Keep historical observations on their original date.

The handoff when London is still holding a position

An incoming trader can inherit exposure as well as information. Picture a London long with part of the original position still open, while the New York plan would separately permit a fresh long after another raid. Marking these as two successful signals without recording their overlap hides the fact that both may rely on the same low and the same USD move. The next desk needs the outstanding quantity and failure point as well as the chart levels.

When starting flat, make the handoff note deliberately shorter. Write the frozen London extremes, what price did during the gap between windows, which destination has already been delivered and the first condition that could justify new exposure. If London has already delivered both external objectives in your plan, the appropriate New York instruction may be to wait for an entirely new map. Session change alone cannot regenerate spent objectives.

A useful training exercise uses two observers. One stops watching at the London cutoff and writes a handoff. The other receives only that note and the intervening candles, then reconstructs the state at New York’s start. Compare their labels without showing the afternoon outcome. The disagreement often pinpoints whether the real weakness is a vague London window or an undefined first-touch rule.

Pay attention to conditional language. “Sell the London high” omits what could cancel the order. “Study a sell only after an unvisited high trades and a later downside shift completes before expiry” can be tested. The second instruction can produce a perfectly legitimate afternoon with no order at all.

Worked replay A: The incoming desk inherits a level, not a signal

The frozen London low is 1.08815. At 06:55 New York the handoff log shows no price beyond it. The other London extreme is at 1.09073. These facts can travel to the next session. A stale order that depended on a London-only trigger cannot, because it expired with its own window.

The first New York probe beyond the inherited edge reaches 1.08785. Time matters: a sweep five minutes before the handoff would have changed the opening inventory even if it left the same high and low on the daily bar. Here the break through 1.08925 belongs to the incoming session, so the trade can be judged on evidence available there.

Reconstruct the decision before reading the outcome

Cover the candles to the right of 12:20. On this EUR/USD bid chart the test candle opens at 1.08862, trades down to 1.08785 and ends at 1.08826. The close tells you that bids recovered part of the excursion. It does not yet tell you that anyone bought a particular number of lots, or that the prior short-term high will give way. Mark the low as an observation and leave the order field blank.

Now reveal the candle beginning 12:30. Its close at 1.08964 is above the earlier pivot at 1.08925. This is the completed break used by the exercise. Look two candles apart: the high of the bar beginning 12:25 is 1.08872 and the low of the bar beginning 12:35 is 1.08904. Their separation forms the bullish fair value gap in this model. One strong green candle alone would not establish those two outside prices.

A resting buy at their midpoint, 1.08888, can first be submitted at 12:40 under a next-bar convention. The 12:35 candle is named for its opening time, so its low cannot supply a fill for an order that depends on its close. This matters whenever the same screenshot appears to show both confirmation and a cheap entry. Write the order time before revealing the next low, not after finding a favourable one.

Assume a constant 1.0-pip spread throughout this small slice. On the return, bid reaches 1.08856 and the corresponding ask reaches 1.08866. The latter is at or below the requested buy price. We book 1.08888 as the fill, with no price improvement, no delay after activation and enough available size. Those are transparent simulation assumptions. A real candle, even from the correct side of the spread, is not a broker’s confirmation.

What the order would risk in cash

Give the practice account a USD balance of 1360. Its hypothetical cap of one half of one percent is $6.80 for this decision. For a USD-quoted pair with a 100,000-unit standard contract, one pip at one standard lot is $10. Adding 0.8 pip for assumed round-trip commission and other execution friction gives $128.00 of modelled downside at one lot. The spread is already present in the entry and exit quote rules and is not charged a second time.

Divide $6.80 by $128.00 and round down to the next permitted hundredth of a lot. That leaves 0.05 lots, risking about $6.40 under these assumptions. A gap or worse stop fill can exceed that number. Position sizing changes the money exposed; it cannot turn a missing confirmation into a valid entry. When the minimum tradable size exceeds the cap, the worksheet records a pass.

Change just one fact

Imagine a bid at 1.08796 during the handoff interval. A trader who opens the terminal at noon in Accra might never see it on a restricted-hours chart. Restore the intervening quotes before writing “untouched London level”. The failed freshness test need not erase London from the map; it changes which New York entry rule is eligible.

Worked replay B: The incoming desk inherits a level, not a signal

The frozen London high is 1.26740. At 06:55 New York the handoff log shows no price beyond it. The other London extreme is at 1.26550. These facts can travel to the next session. A stale order that depended on a London-only trigger cannot, because it expired with its own window.

The first New York probe beyond the inherited edge reaches 1.26765. Time matters: a sweep five minutes before the handoff would have changed the opening inventory even if it left the same high and low on the daily bar. Here the break through 1.26657 belongs to the incoming session, so the trade can be judged on evidence available there.

Audit the short from the exit side of the quote

Read the second tape independently. The 12:25 bid high is 1.26765. By the end of the bar starting 12:35, bid has closed at 1.26631, below the pre-existing pivot at 1.26657. The workbook calls that downward displacement. It does not require a guess about which institution initiated the move. The mark is useful because a different reviewer can identify the same closing price on the same feed.

The low of the 12:30 candle is 1.26700 and the high of the 12:40 candle is 1.26672. The later high remains below the earlier low, leaving a bearish execution gap between them. Halving this interval gives 1.26686. A sell limit resting there becomes eligible only after 12:40 has finished. When bid subsequently reaches 1.26710 the paper order can fill at its stated price. No favourable slippage is credited.

It is tempting to score this short from the lowest red wick, because that is what the bid chart displays. The position actually has to buy back. With an assumed spread of 0.6 pip, an ask target at 1.26454 requires a bid at or below 1.26448. An ask stop at 1.26774 needs only a bid at or above 1.26768. Marking these two conversions before scoring prevents a one-spread error on both exits.

Keep the original order record even when the outcome is obvious from the last candle. A reviewer needs the decision price, the reference quote and the activation time, not just a screenshot captioned “short”. If the platform would have rejected a resting order this close to market, or the feed lacks quotes in the return interval, the correct response is to change the fill status. It is not to claim a market execution at the old limit price.

Score the path, then challenge the assumption

The deciding candle opens at 13:00. Its bid range is 1.26706 to 1.26781. With the assumed spread, the ask range is 1.26712 to 1.26787. The upper stop is reached before the other exit without requiring a guess about two exits inside this bar. A later movement cannot reverse a booked exit. In particular, a later visit to the original target would not repair a prior stop.

Increase the estimated round-trip friction by another half pip as a sensitivity check, while leaving entry, stop and target fills fixed. Planned risk:reward becomes 1:2.23, obtained by dividing 22.1 pips of possible net reward by 9.9 pips of downside. This answers a cost question only. If widening the actual bid/ask spread changes whether an order is triggered, reconstruct the path instead of merely reducing the result by a fee.

Change just one fact

Imagine a bid at 1.26754 during the handoff interval. A trader who opens the terminal at noon in Accra might never see it on a restricted-hours chart. Restore the intervening quotes before writing “untouched London level”. The failed freshness test need not erase London from the map; it changes which New York entry rule is eligible.

What can go wrong in the review?

The exact London-New York overlap shifts relative to local clocks during weeks when the UK and US change clocks on different dates. If the incoming trader uses a London-local reference while the outgoing trader uses New York time, exchange explicit timestamps rather than session names.

Reader exercise: Is the London level untouched at handoff?

Try the following classification without using profit or loss as a clue. Measure the visits after London froze and before the New York check. For this worksheet, the value must be at most 0 visits. Also require this separate fact: the intersession tape covers the entire handoff interval. These are conditions for admitting a row to a study. They do not replace the order trigger, size calculation or exit plan. The six records are constructed cases, not a report of observed market frequencies.

Cover the answer column and decide which facts you would request before admitting each record. A passes the numerical test at 0 visits and has the other required evidence. B has the other evidence but measures 2 visits. Under the stated rule that is enough to exclude B. A clean-looking reaction after B cannot change the comparison visits after London froze and before the New York check ≤ 0. If you want to study a wider definition, write it as a new version and rerun every observation.

C is the deliberate boundary case. Its value of 0 visits equals the threshold. This worksheet uses an inclusive comparison, so C passes. A version that demands strictly less would exclude it. Keep exact prices or timestamps in the original record before rounding for display; values that look equal on a chart may still differ at the feed’s actual precision. The most efficient place to look for a disagreement between two reviewers is often an equality case like this.

D has a larger value than allowed, so it fails even though the separate prerequisite is unknown. E demonstrates the opposite error: the measured 0 visits is acceptable, but the prerequisite is known to be false. F lacks the numerical evidence and its remaining condition is satisfied. There is no basis to call it either a clean pass or a measured failure. Keeping “unresolved” distinct from “no” preserves what data collection could still settle.

A cropped New York chart provides no evidence that the London edge survived the gap between the two windows.

Recover the day that produced the number

Go back to the full session tape for the disputed observation. Load enough history to include the session that supplied the reference and the interval between that session and the proposed decision. A screenshot starting at entry can never establish an unvisited level on its own. If your vendor has no bars for part of the interval, preserve the gap in the record. Substituting another feed may be useful as a comparison, but it changes the provenance of the observation.

For this lesson the minimum useful packet is the London freeze record and a continuous timestamped handoff tape. Preserve the original precision and include the clock used. If another reader can reproduce the number but not the label, examine the equality rule and prerequisite. If they cannot reproduce the number, settle the input discrepancy first. These are different faults, and only the second can be repaired by retrieving better data.

Use the six rows to test the data process before drawing any market conclusion. Two rows pass, three have a known failure and one is unresolved. Of the five settled records, two pass; among all six the possible pass count is two or three depending on the missing measurement. Neither fraction measures how often a London trade wins. The labels reflect a deliberately chosen exercise, and no trade outcomes were supplied.

A test you can run on unseen sessions

Compare a handoff containing only high and low with one that also contains visit history, direction of the last displacement, and a pending news event. Count how many otherwise eligible trades the second note correctly classifies as stale.

Make one dated record for each session you inspect, including those in which the required condition never appears. Keep a count of eligible signals, orders placed, orders filled and positions closed. A result per fill answers a different question from a result per session. Separate them before comparing this rule with another way of reading London-to-New York handoff.

Frequently asked questions

To put this worksheet beside a live chart, use the guides to London Kill Zone timing and the Judas Swing to define the session question. Then compare market structure shifts for confirmation, fair value gaps for the return price, and order blocks for the larger area behind the move.