KZ: Killzone
Also known as: KZ, kill zone, ICT killzone, session killzone
What is it?
A killzone is a short window of the trading day - usually two to three hours around a session open - when ICT traders expect the day's meaningful move to start, and outside which they simply do not take setups. The four windows most traders use are quoted in New York time: the London killzone from 02:00 to 05:00, the New York AM killzone from 07:00 to 10:00, the London close window from 10:00 to 12:00, and the Asian range from 20:00 to midnight. On a typical EUR/USD day the pair drifts 12 pips across the six quiet hours before 02:00, then covers 40 pips between 02:00 and 05:00.
- 1Asian range - 20:00 to 00:00 New York time Price coils in a narrow band overnight. You are not trading here; you are marking the high and low that the later sessions will hunt.
- 2London killzone - 02:00 to 05:00 The first real volume of the day. Price typically sweeps one side of the Asian range, then moves with intent. Most of a EUR/USD or GBP/USD daily range is built in these three hours.
- 3New York AM killzone - 07:00 to 10:00 US data lands and the London-New York overlap peaks. This is the day's second and often larger expansion, and the window most US-based traders work.
- 4London close - 10:00 to 12:00 London desks square their books. Moves here are more often retracements of the morning leg than fresh trends, so treat continuation entries with more caution.
Same pair, same day - the killzone held most of the range. The reason is ordinary rather than mysterious: order flow concentrates when the large desks in a financial centre open, and it concentrates twice over when London and New York overlap. What that gives you is a filter, not a signal.
Plenty of killzones open and produce nothing worth trading, and a killzone entry taken without the structure you planned to trade is still a bad entry. Your capital is at risk in every window.
Why it matters: Restricting entries to two or three hours a day filters out the low-volume chop where most setups fail, and tells you when to stop watching.
It decides when you are allowed to trade at all, so a mis-set window puts every entry you take into the day's dead hours.
Real-world example
EUR/USD drifted 12 pips through the quiet hours before 02:00 New York time, then covered 40 pips between 02:00 and 05:00 - the London killzone carried most of that day's range.
How SignalBots handles it
SignalBots' session filter mutes a bot outside the hours you actually trade, so a killzone-only plan is enforced by the bot rather than by your willpower at 03:00. See /risk-warning.
Pro tip
Log which killzone your winners actually came from over 50 trades - most traders find one window carries their edge and the other three cost them money.
Common pitfalls
Treating the clock as the setup - entering at 02:00 because the killzone opened, rather than waiting for the structure you planned to trade inside it.
Frequently asked questions
What time are the ICT killzones?
In New York time: London 02:00-05:00, New York AM 07:00-10:00, London close 10:00-12:00, and the Asian range 20:00-00:00. They are quoted in New York time because the model was built around the London-New York overlap.
Do killzone times shift with daylight saving?
The windows stay fixed in New York local time, so their UTC equivalents move by an hour twice a year. If your charts are set to UTC or to broker server time, re-check the offset after each clock change or you will trade the wrong hour.
Which killzone should a beginner start with?
Pick the one that overlaps your own waking hours and trade only that for a month. One window watched properly beats four windows half-watched, and it gives you a clean sample to judge whether the filter helps you at all.
Do killzones apply to crypto?
Crypto trades continuously, so there is no session open in the forex sense. Volume still clusters around the London and New York equity opens, so the windows are worth testing there, but treat them as a hypothesis, not a given.
Is a killzone the same thing as a trading session?
No. A session runs for eight or nine hours; a killzone is the two-to-three hour slice at its start where the move is expected to originate. The killzone sits inside the session rather than replacing it.
Trading involves substantial risk of loss. Historical and backtested results do not guarantee future performance. Read the full risk warning.
