G/J London Open

My schedule dictates primarily trading early AM EST after the London open.
I have studied patterns of different pairs and found G/J is the most consistent in the first few hours of trading. This is not backtested years or scientific but based on a looong time experience trading the first 2-4 hours of London before off to work.

Basically what I do is get up during the 2nd hour of London trading and set chart on hourly candles. The 2nd hour candle sets the short term trend for the morning. I watch for a retrace in the 3rd hour and usually enter the 1st trade on the retrace into the 2nd hour candle. Ideally the retrace doesn't move beyond the 2nd hour candle body. If the trade starts moving in my direction I will enter another trade at the breakout beyond the 2nd hour candle or around 20 pips profit. Seems once you get the breakout into profit then usually good for at least 50 pips. Anything more than 50 is a bonus but happens frequently.

If the 1st and 2nd hour candles are both in the same direction then I sometimes enter small trade at close of 2nd hour candle. You have to be careful when both 1st and 2nd hour candles are either red or green. Most of the time there will be at least a small retrace into the 2nd hour candle. This is not necessarily a stronger signal but sometimes you get big trades like 3/27 when the pattern leading up to the 3rd hour candle looks looks too good to pass up. The 2nd hour candle still dictates the trend regardless of the 1st hour candle.

Setting SL is the toughest call of course but usually I set it 10 pips outside the 1st or 2nd hour candle depending on the range of open & close in those candles. I don't like to go over 50 on the SL and sometimes practice Jacko's hedging strategy. I have had many trades stopped out that eventually would have returned to profit but the small losses are more than offset by the high percentage of 50+ pips winners.

You need to know candlesticks and price action (james 16) combined with alot of coffee in the early hours. Watch out for those spinning tops. My charts have fibs, pivots, and SR. I watch the calendar and news for surprises. This is not a perfect system and can go either way in streaks. If I get a couple days of losses I take a break.

I don't know if there truly is a pattern when they start trading over there but this has been highly successful for me and I welcome all comments and feedback.

Retrace 50% into the 2nd hour candle body and in the direction of the 2nd hour candle?

This is interesting.

I was up early today and took the 5:00 AM EST bull signal and made a nice profit letting it run all day.

Congrats...that is almost 300pips in green now. What was your entry price 136.47?

Couple recent trades.

3/26 was a nice red candle signal at 5:00 AM retraced and stalled at the 6:00 AM green candle. This was the sell signal with an afternoon TP of around 70 pips.

3/27 was an even better signal but I overslept.
You can see the nice bear trend moving into the 5:00 AM red candle sell signal with a very small retrace. Oh well, can't win them all.

3/30 this morning started with the bear trend until London open. The 5:00 green retraced into the 4:00 green providing the buy signal you see on the chart. This was good for 192 pips. I got out anticipating an evening reversal.

Nice job.

8 hours of red candles prior to the trade had me worried but that 5:00 green candle never dropped below the preceding green candle providing a nice buy signal on the retrace.

Today sell signal was bad.

I didn't take today's signal. The 3 & 4:00 AM London open red candles were too weak in the morning bull market. The low of the 4:00 red candle didn't even break down past the previous. No clear direction = No trade on the G/J.

Instead was in the Aus/Us and just barely hit the TP.

This mornings opening trend was green from the 1:00 AM reversal into the 5:00AM candle.
We had about a 40% retrace into the 4:00 green candle triggering the buy signal.

As I stated earlier, be happy with 40 - 50 pips and anything above a nice bonus. This trade was good for an easy 50 depending on your entry.

This morning's longs started again at 1:00 AM and grew stronger after the London opening. The 4:00 green candle was great buy signal confirmed in the early 5:00 green candle continuation.

Another good signal and trade with profit range of around 200 pips.

Nice setup and trades this morning although a little risky into the 3rd hour with a heavy news day and near 80% retrace.

London open started with 2 nice hourly green candles on a reversal pattern from the night's short action setting the stage for long signal.

The 3rd hour retrace provided scaling in buying opportunity on the way down.

Total pips about 175.

We`re going 150+ easily the coming week, if USDJPY maintains above 100.00 and GU rises to 1.5+

Hi Money-RX,

When you say 2nd hour london, are you referring to 7 AM GMT or 10 AM GMT.

In other words, what time in EST is your 2nd candle begins.

Thanks for your time

TS

Start of 1st hour is 3:00 AM EST which is the start of the London open.

Gotta be careful this morning, news coming during the 2nd hour of open or from 4:00AM to 4:30AM EST.

Monday was a tough morning - profit was available but tricky.
Rest of week is making up for it nicely.

Excellent week all on the 4:00 candle signals

Gotta figure out how to maximize the profits - left way too much cash on the table exiting too early.

Yeah I exit early half the time

Better than making a loss though

Last week also had good signals and trading.

Last trade of the week and 10 winners in a row.

Today sold near the morning high and closed near the daily low 100 pips.