The London-New York overlap is overrated for a lot of scalpers

[Amanhasnoname]

It is repeated everywhere that the overlap, roughly 13:00 to 17:00 GMT, is the best window for scalping because volume peaks. Volume peaking does not mean every minute of it suits a scalp.

The window is really several different markets glued together. The first hour includes the US data releases and the New York open, which means fast spikes and wide spreads right when entries look strongest. The middle is often the cleanest, with decent depth and moves that follow through. The last hour is where London leaves, and liquidity starts to thin ahead of rollover, so ranges compress while spread starts to creep.

A scalper who trades the whole block with a single rule set effectively averages three different environments. Splitting the overlap into 30-minute slices and checking net pips per trade for each slice is a ten-minute spreadsheet job and often shows that one or two slices carry the whole result. Cutting the others can raise expectancy even though trade count drops.

There is also the pair factor. GBPUSD might behave very differently in the 13:30 slice from EURJPY, and that is not visible if everything is lumped together.

If a strategy is only profitable in half of the overlap, trading all of it is just paying spread for noise.

Which 30-minute slice inside the overlap gives you your best results, and which is a quiet loser?