What a 'clean' Asian range looks like before I trust a breakout

[FXS London Scalper]

Not every Asian range is worth trading at the London open. Grading the range before 08:00 and only trading breakouts from clean ones is a useful filter.

A checklist for EURUSD and GBPUSD:

• Range between 15 and 40 pips. Under 15 is too tight, any open noise breaks it. Over 40 usually means news already moved the pair.
• At least two touches on each side, so the high and low are real levels and not a single spike.
• No single M15 bar making up more than half the range.
• No major data from Asia that already pushed the pair overnight.

To check whether it works for you, grade each morning before 08:00 and log whether the first breakout reached 1R, then compare passing days with the rest after a couple of months.

The two-touch rule has the clearest logic. A high made by one spike at 03:00 is unlikely to have the same resting orders as a level tested twice.

How do others filter the Asian range? Do you use a size limit only, or something about its shape?

[Shadow Trader]

Spreads widen, quote sizes shrink and ticks slow down well before the number actually arrives. Liquidity providers see the same calendar as everybody else, and pulling quotes just ahead of a release is how they avoid being run over by the first algorithm to read the headline.

Nothing about this looks dramatic on a chart. Price sits still, the candle is tiny, and the whole thing looks like calm. That's exactly why it catches people. A tiny range with a spread several times normal is a bad deal for any target under five pips.

Entries placed in this window pay the most and get the least. A position opened here also has to survive the release itself, with a stop that will probably be filled badly.

Waiting until the dust settles costs nothing but patience.

Has a pre-release entry ever worked often enough to justify the wider spread?