London Breakout Strategy - 1H Timeframe Modified

Im also trying it out. Many thanks, i appreciate your effort

You are very welcome. Do some backtests or demo first if youā€™d like to see the results for yourself before jumping in live. Strategy is simple and easy to do if it suits your style.

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I promise this is my final dummy question Cloud. Its a two part dummy question.
1 You speak of the Asian session, how do I find that?
2. Entering the trade after part of a candle breaks the rectangle/range up or down,
is our signal to go? or must the CLOSE of the breakout candle be outside the range?

Hi Mick,

Feel free to ask as many questions as you like, Iā€™d like for you to succeed too.

Are you using Tradingview? If yes, you can insert an indicator thatā€™s called ā€œSessionā€ on to your charts which will show you the different colouring for the sessions.

If not, you just need to search online to know in YOUR timeframe when the Asian session start and finish to watch out for.

For point 2, it is entirely up to you, some people see a breakout of the range and enter the trade right away or even place a pending order on both sides of the ranges, I donā€™t do that to avoid fakeouts as sometimes it can breakout slightly then pull straight back. I wait until the candle is CLOSED outside of the range to enter the trade - hence why after the session has opened I only need to check back every hour to see if it broken out and closed outside.

Hope that all make sense for you :smiley:

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Yes it does make sense Cloud but I warned you Iā€™m still a dummy.
Just to clarifyā€¦are we talking about the physical candle including wick being outside the range when closed or the price ?
I use IG and had a look at Tradingview after reading your post. Am I correct to say Tradingview is just a platform and we cant trade on there?

Hey Mick, I was at exactly where you are, so do not worry and feel free to shoot me questions. I am not a ā€œprofessionalā€ but I will be more than happy to help where I can with the best of my knowledge.

See the example below, you can see I have pointed at the candle the broke out of the range. at the CLOSE of that candle, I entered the trade.

Let me know if you have any other questions?

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im trying it out on all the majors today, will get back to you with the results

I trade a version of the London Breakout on GBP/USD. Iā€™ve also heard of it being run on the EUR/USD. This isnā€™t my thread but I would be cautious extending the reach of this strategy beyond those two, and cable would be the favourite.

To identify the best candidate, have a look at ATR for the GBP/USD H1 chart over 3 months. Notice the obvious sharp peaks in volatility as London opens. Thereā€™s a massive spike every single day over the same time, which is typically 2 times the ATR low of the day. This is what makes the money.

The pattern is similar on EUR/USD but not quite as strong. But look at ATR on another highly traded major, like USD/JPY - no strong daily pattern - avoid.

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Yea definitely, I have backtested and found that the 4 GBP and EUR pairs that I mentioned initially works best. the 2 USD pairs I am having little concerns around as they donā€™t often move smoothly until the NY session.

Thanks for the input though, much appreciated.

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Hi Cloudninee and Tommor,
This is a great thread. I will be looking into backtesting this. Thanks for the useful and detailed steer.

Let me add my thanks also. This indeed is a great thread for dummies like me and I appreciate the generosity of Cloudninee and Tommor.
The drinks are on me lads.

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How long have you guys that trade this strategy backtested for and is there any pairs that this works much better for? Im currently backtesting this starting from 2013 - and does not seem to get that positive results - especially on the EUR/USD pair.

Hi, thank you for your comment.

I have been trading this live for some time, demo it for nearly 6 months and backtested nearly 2 years worth of data and it has been profitable for me.

If there is anything unclear in the strategy above that might be interfering with your backtesting, let me know and I can try to clarify? There are certain things that if you do wrong (determine the ranges, when to enter etc.) can all affect how the results will be.

As mentioned above, the R:R is 1.5, so if win 50% of the time, you are still profiting.

In terms of currency pairs, as mentioned as well, the 4 pairs relating with the EUR and GBP are the best to date (EURUSD, EURGBP, GBPUSD and GBPJPY). I am also trading the 2 USD pairs which are USDCHF and USDJPY which are profitable but not as good as the others so I may drop those if they donā€™t pick up in performance.

Let me know if I can help with anything else at all.

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Appreciate the reply man!

Ive been trying different setups to backtest with this with negative results to be honest. I tried to incorporate one with going long/short when stock is above/below 20EMA with pending orders above the entry point.

Ive also tried to incorporate directly how you traded your strategy.

Can i just ask - When you backtested 2 years worth of data, which year was it?

Hi and thank you for your comment. Wishing you all the best on your trading journey. If you have any questions about this particular strategy, just let me know. As mentioned somewhere in the thread, I am nowhere near being a ā€œprofessionalā€ but I will try to help where possible.

No worries at all!

I always backtest the recent years so would have been 2017 and/or 2018 onwards I think.

I donā€™t use a filter like moving averages as with this strategy, you are trading the breakout, so it does not always follow the moving averages (maybe unless itā€™s approeaching it, but not always). By doing this, you might be filtering out some winning trades too.

Also you mentioned stock, but I have not tested this with stocks, only forex.

I also donā€™t do pending orders either, the strategy is to enter at the close of the breakout candle. There are some variations of this strategy where people place pending orders at the high and low of the ranges, I strongly do not recommend this especially during these volatile times as price can easily grab your pending order and go the other way - hence why I wait for it to CLOSE outside of the range.

So there are a few things there that might be confusing you about the strategy, feel free to refer to the original post, the examples I have posted or let me know if you have any questions at all :smiley:

Of course each to their own, Iā€™m not saying you are wrong but if you have done enough backtests to prove to yourself that it does not work, perhaps a different strategy might be the way to go. Just an honest opinion from my end :slight_smile:

You are very welcome Mick and best of luck on your trading journey! :smiley:

I mistyped* I recently just moved over to forex from equities :sweat_smile:

I will try to backtest the recent years myself to see if there is any different results incorporating a 50MA to see the general market direction of the pair.

How big of a sample size did you backtest for before you went demo with this strategy?

I backested on the 4 main EUR and GBP pairs (EURUSD, EURGBP, GBPUSD and GBPJPY) for the period :smiley:

Best of luck backtesting!

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Thanks so much for sharing this! I too am from Brisbane and have been looking for something like this to trade overnight. Iā€™ve done some testing of this today and it fairs well so far.

Just a quick question, do you wait for a candle to completely break out and close above or below the range set before placing your buy or sell?

Thanks so much