If you traded NQ for a month and only took setups inside the three windows below, your equity curve would look almost identical to a full-time discretionary trader's — with a fraction of the screen time. Killzones exist because algorithmic delivery reprices NQ at predictable clocks. Once you internalize the three that matter, chart time drops and hit rate climbs.
Killzone 1 — The London Judas Swing (02:00–05:00 ET)
London opens, price makes a false push in one direction, sweeps a session extreme, and reverses into New York. The setup is not the swing itself — it's the reversal candle after the sweep. Mark the Asia high/low the night before, wait for the sweep, and take the first FVG mitigation on the 5-minute back through the range.
Target the opposite side of the Asia range. Stop above/below the sweep wick. R:R is regularly 3:1 without any optimization.
Killzone 2 — The NY AM Silver Bullet (10:00–11:00 ET)
A one-hour window that repeats almost daily. Wait for an FVG that printed between 09:30 and 10:00 to get retested inside the killzone. Enter on the mitigation, stop beyond the sweep or the opposing swing, target the next liquidity pool (previous day high/low or session extreme).
The Silver Bullet works because macro-driven delivery finishes repricing by 10:00 ET, and the AM inefficiency gets rebalanced before lunch. Miss the window and the same setup at 11:15 is a coin flip.
Killzone 3 — The PM Raid-and-Reverse (14:00–15:00 ET)
The final structured window of the day. Price often raids the AM session high or low, sweeps stops from morning traders, and reverses into the close. Look for a sweep of the AM extreme, a market structure shift on the 3-minute, and take the entry back into the day's range.
The rules that make it repeatable
- — Mark reference levels (Asia range, PDH/PDL, AM range) BEFORE the killzone opens.
- — One setup per killzone. If it doesn't set up in the first 30 minutes, skip.
- — Never trade the killzone during major news minutes — wait 2 minutes after the print.
- — Stop distance defined by structure, not by a fixed number of points.
Drill it in replay
Load any recent NQ session in the replay trainer, jump to the killzone open, and step bar-by-bar. Twenty reps per killzone and the setups start jumping off the chart in real time.