The Judas swing: real pattern or a story we tell afterward?

[Shadow Trader]

Every session open someone posts a screenshot of price moving one way, reversing, and calling it a Judas swing. It is easy to spot in hindsight, and that is the problem. In real time, the early move can be the real move. To test it properly I would define the pattern before looking. For example: in the first hour of the session, price breaks the opening range in one direction by a certain distance, then returns and closes beyond the opposite side. Then count how many days in a sample match, and what happened next. When I did this over a few months on one pair, the pattern appeared often enough to notice but reversed fully only about as often as it continued, which is not an edge by itself. It became useful only when combined with a higher timeframe bias and a sweep of a prior session level. As a standalone name it is a narrative. As a defined, tested condition with context, it can be one input among several.

[FXS HongKong Scalper]

Testing it with a definition fixed beforehand is the only fair way. What did you find in terms of follow through after the reversal? My own rough test on GBPUSD showed the pattern appearing often, but the average move after it was barely larger than on days without it. It looked strong on screenshots and weak in the numbers.