An approach worth considering: don't trade the first touch of the Asian session high or low after London opens. Wait for the second test.
The reasoning, on GBPUSD and EURUSD:
The first touch often comes in the first few minutes, when spreads are still settling and stops above the range get run in one spike. Entries there tend to get the worst fills of the morning.
If price pulls back at least 5 pips and comes back to the level, the second test tells you more. Either it breaks with less of a spike, or it fails clearly and you can short the failure with a tight stop above the new high.
Some days there is no second test at all, and those moves are simply missed.
The trade-off in numbers, as a worked example: if the second-test version wins 48% of the time against 55% for first touches, but the stop defined by a real swing is half the size, the same target in pips is worth twice as many R. A 1R loss and 1.2R winner at 55% gives +0.11R; a 2.4R winner at 48% gives +0.63R. Log both versions on your pair to see which side of that you're on.
Does anyone else wait for the retest of session extremes, and how long do you give the second test before abandoning the idea?
I switched to second tests on EURUSD about a year ago, mostly because my first touch entries kept getting filled two or three pips worse than the chart showed. The spread at 08:01 London on my account was often triple what it was by 08:20, and that alone was eating most of the edge on a tight stop.
My rule for how long to wait is simple. If the pullback after the first touch is at least 5 pips and price returns within roughly 45 minutes, I take the second test seriously. Past that, the London move has usually picked a direction without me, and a late return to the Asian high is more often a slow grind than a clean decision. I just delete the alert and move on.
The part I would add is that the failed second test has been the better trade for me than the break. When price tags the high again, can't close above it on the M5 and the next candle opens lower, the stop above that new high is small and the target back to the middle of the Asian range is usually there.
