The Asian and London Sessions in Gold
Gold's day has a shape. Knowing which session you are in changes what a given price move probably means.
The trading day is not a single market
Gold trades nearly around the clock, but liquidity arrives in waves. The practical divisions are the Asian session, the London session, the London/New York overlap, and the thin hours after New York closes. A broker's day also has a maintenance break, during which quotes stop and any system that does not know it is a break will read stale prices as real ones.
Asian session: the range that gets used later
The Asian session is typically the quietest and often builds a comparatively narrow range. That range is not interesting because it predicts anything — it is interesting because its high and low become reference levels for the rest of the day, and stops accumulate beyond them.
A great many London moves begin by taking one end of the Asian range. Whether that take continues or fails is the actual question, and it is not answerable from the Asian session alone.
London: where the day usually gets decided
London brings genuine volume. The common shapes are a clean expansion out of the Asian range that continues into New York, or an early push out of the range that fails and reverses — the classic sweep. This system restricts several of its rules to London and the overlap, because their logic depends on the participation that is only present then.
The overlap and the afternoon
The London/New York overlap carries the largest share of the day's movement, and most US economic releases land in it. After London closes, liquidity thins; moves become less reliable and spreads widen, which raises the cost hurdle for any new trade. A setup that would be worth taking at 13:00 UTC may not clear its own costs at 20:00.
Why session is recorded on every signal
The same technical pattern is a different proposition depending on when it appears. So the session is stored with each signal, and the performance page breaks results down by session — which is how you would find out that a rule works in London and not in Asia, rather than assuming it.
Next: how trend is measured rather than eyeballed.
Every figure on this page comes from a simulated account. Simulated results are a record of what a system did, not a promise of what it will do. Nothing here is investment advice, and no result is guaranteed.