I trade the London open. Between the hours of 5 and 6am (UK time) I analyse multiple currency pairs for emerging setups. Should I deem a currency pair possible of a breakout and run, I place an order on that currency pair for a long or short depending on expectation based on my indicators (I won’t go into my strategy for how I do this as I don’t want to bog the overall question down). The ideal is this order fills at ~08:00am and runs to target; exploiting the volatility and momentum of the London open. If however at ~10:30am there hasn’t been a breakout and my order hasn’t filled, I cancel my order with the theory that if my order has not filled at this time the volatility of London open has been and gone.
However what I’ve seen recently quite frequently is after cancelling my order, price action move such that the order would have filled and ran to the target.
So, I’m keen to know what you guys do? For those who trade the London open, do you do similar to me in cancelling your orders mid morning if they have not filled, or do you simply let run (assuming no news) through the day, on the assumption a breakout may occur at any time?
I used to run daily Big Ben trades on the FTSE100 index. I used to cancel the order if not triggered by midday London time because after that the US futures and then the US market itself starts to have an impact on FTSE prices - many times its a different session, no relation to the ealry am London price action.
I trade LO and earlier European Open for the exact reason you said - ironically I also found the same results that the majority get filled at LO and the win rate decreases as time passes from LO should the order still remain open.
Not only does this open the risk of you holding overnight for these late entries, but it also can at times result in your original trade analysis becoming invalid because of more recent price action.
back in 2008 to 2010 LO was far more profitable and the tradable increase in volatility was evident, now it’s not quite so clean cut and it’s a flip reversal whereby I trade LC - it’s cyclical, just be ready to adapt.
It’s an interesting point you make on analysis, because that’s another reason why I tend to cancel the order mid morning. So out of interest, if you’re trading the Frankfurt and subsequent LO what sort of time do you cancel your orders if not filled? Are you similar to me in cancelling mid morning, or do you make the call before/after that?