What are the forex kill zones, and when are they?

How to spot it

Currency trading runs around the clock from Sunday evening to Friday evening, but activity is not spread evenly. It rises when the dealing centres in London and New York are open and falls in between. Kill zones are a way of saying: do not watch all 24 hours, watch the few hours around those openings.

In the SMC reading each window has a typical job. The Asia window often builds a narrow range. The London window is where that range is first left, sometimes with a false move known as the Judas swing. The New York window either continues the London move or reverses it. That three-part day is described in power of three. These are tendencies people describe, not rules the market follows.

The exact windows are a convention. Other teachers start London an hour earlier or later, run New York to 11:00, or add a London close window. ForexLens fixes one set so that a game can grade it, and the sessions are configurable in the chart kit. What matters is that you pick windows, anchor them to New York time, and keep them fixed.

Step by step

1. Anchor everything to New York local time, not to UTC, because the windows move with New York daylight saving.
2. Mark the three windows: 20:00 to 00:00, 02:00 to 05:00 and 07:00 to 10:00 New York time.
3. Convert them to your own time zone for today, checking whether New York and your city are both on summer time, both on winter time, or out of step.
4. On the chart, mark the high and low made in each window: SMC traders treat session highs and lows as liquidity pools.
5. Recheck the conversion in March and in late October to early November, when clocks change.

Kill zone times in UTC, London and Toronto

New York is five hours behind UTC in winter and four hours behind in summer. That gives two sets of UTC times for the same New York windows.

• Asia, 20:00 to 00:00 New York: 01:00 to 05:00 UTC in winter, 00:00 to 04:00 UTC in summer.
• London, 02:00 to 05:00 New York: 07:00 to 10:00 UTC in winter, 06:00 to 09:00 UTC in summer.
• New York, 07:00 to 10:00 New York: 12:00 to 15:00 UTC in winter, 11:00 to 14:00 UTC in summer.
• London local time: for most of the year London is five hours ahead of New York, so the windows fall at 01:00 to 05:00, 07:00 to 10:00 and 12:00 to 15:00 on a London clock.
• Toronto: Toronto keeps the same time as New York all year, so the windows are the same on a Toronto clock: 20:00 to 00:00, 02:00 to 05:00 and 07:00 to 10:00.

What daylight saving does to the windows

New York and London do not change their clocks on the same dates. New York moves forward on the second Sunday of March and back on the first Sunday of November. London moves forward on the last Sunday of March and back on the last Sunday of October.

For the two or three weeks in March between those dates, and for about one week between late October and early November, London is four hours ahead of New York instead of five. During those weeks every New York-anchored window arrives one hour earlier on a London clock: the London kill zone runs from 06:00 to 09:00 London time, not 07:00 to 10:00.

Places that never change their clocks, such as Tokyo and Singapore, see the windows shift by an hour twice a year. This is why the Kill Zone Clock game works in your own time zone and is aware of daylight saving: a table memorised in January is wrong in July.

Forex trading hours: the 24-hour week

The spot currency market has no single exchange and no opening bell. By convention the trading week opens on Sunday at about 17:00 New York time, as dealing desks in the Asia-Pacific region start their Monday, and closes on Friday at 17:00 New York time. In between it trades continuously, and 17:00 New York time is also treated as the end of each trading day.

The day is usually described as four overlapping sessions named after dealing centres: Sydney, Tokyo, London and New York. The hours quoted for each vary by source, since they are business hours and not official market times. As a rough guide in New York time, Sydney runs from about 17:00 to 02:00, Tokyo from about 19:00 to 04:00, London from about 03:00 to 12:00 and New York from about 08:00 to 17:00.

The hours when London and New York are both open, roughly 08:00 to 12:00 New York time, are usually the most active of the day, because the two largest dealing centres are trading at once. The quietest stretch is usually the gap after New York closes and before Tokyo is fully open. Retail platforms often widen spreads around the daily 17:00 rollover and close over the weekend. More basics are in the forex FAQ.

Worked example

The chart below is a seeded, simulated trading day from the session generator: 15-minute candles from 18:00 to 11:00 New York time. Before turning the Lens on, try to see where the character of the candles changes: where the quiet stretch ends and the first larger candles begin.

With the Lens on, the three windows are shaded and the high and low of each are marked as session liquidity. The walk-through under the chart lists each window with its candle numbers and its high and low. Note how the Asia high and low become the reference levels for everything London does next.

Reading the chart, step by step

1. Each candle is 15 minutes. The chart runs from 18:00 to 11:00 New York time.
2. Asia kill zone: candles 9 to 24 (20:00 to 00:00 New York time). High 152.314, low 152.072, a range of 24.2 pips.
3. London kill zone: candles 33 to 44 (02:00 to 05:00 New York time). High 152.420, low 152.021, a range of 39.9 pips.
4. New York kill zone: candles 53 to 64 (07:00 to 10:00 New York time). High 152.106, low 151.692, a range of 41.4 pips.
5. The shaded bands are the three windows the game uses. Nothing about them is a rule of the market: they are the hours when the centres that trade most are open, and so when ranges tend to expand.

These numbers come from the generated chart above. Change the seed and the prices change; the rule does not.

Takeaway: Kill zones tell you when to look, and the session highs and lows they leave tell you which levels to watch.

Common mistakes

• Using a fixed UTC table all year. The windows are anchored to New York local time. A UTC table is right for only part of the year and is one hour out for the rest.
• Forgetting the out-of-step weeks. In March and around the end of October, New York and London clocks are out of step for a few weeks. Traders in Europe who do not adjust watch the wrong hour.
• Treating the window as a signal. A kill zone is a time to pay attention, not a reason to trade. Many sessions pass with no setup that meets a checklist, and passing is a valid result.
• Confusing kill zones with full sessions. The London session lasts about nine hours. The London kill zone used here is three of them. Mixing the two leads to marking session highs and lows over the wrong candles.