For Business

Trading Strategies

What Is the London Breakout Strategy

The London breakout is a strategy built on the quiet hours before Europe wakes: the highest and lowest prices of the Asian session make a box, and the first London bars are watched for a close outside it. This paper shows you the euro on 16 September 2025 from real quarter-hour bars, with a 34-pip box left by the 10:00 bar and an afternoon 62 pips over its top, the idea as Tower Bridge lifting at the opening hour, the box and the first hour on the chart, the numbers of the day beside a day the box was never left, and the sessions indicator on your platform.

Difficulty
Intermediate
Reading time
5 min
Pages
8
Reviewed by
Saman Rahbar

This paper is locked

Read it in the browser and keep the PDF with Premium, or buy this one paper.

Buy this paper — $2Get Premium

The box, and London's first bar

The London breakout is built on the quiet hours before Europe wakes. Here is the euro against the dollar on Tuesday 16 September 2025, from real quarter-hour bars. The shaded box is the Asian range, the highest and lowest prices between midnight and 10:00 on the feed's clock: 1.17573 to 1.17914, 34 pips — a pip being the fourth decimal place. The gold bar is London's first quarter hour, which closed at 1.17949, above the box, and by 18:00 the price had reached 1.18533, 62 pips over the top. The strategy watches those first London bars for a close outside the box.

Tower Bridge

Picture Tower Bridge. All night the road is level, and traffic goes across it in a narrow band; at the opening hour the two halves lift and something bigger comes through. The level road is the Asian box, the narrow band the price kept to while Europe slept, and the lifted road is the break, when London's banks and funds arrive at their desks and the price leaves the band. The strategy is named for the hour, not the city; it is the first hour after a quiet night that it watches.

This paper is locked

Read next