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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?

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?