When price consolidates tightly before New York opens, market makers are trapping retail traders in the middle of the range. The real moves happen at the highs and lows where liquidity gets swept. Trading inside the range is how you get chopped up and lose money.
This is a bit of alpha that I could give you. If you see that price is chopping around prior to the New York session, it means that some sort of manipulation is coming. Why? Consolidations happen when the market makers kind of keep price within a tight range and build up liquidity on both sides of the equation. Basically, while they're keeping price here, a lot of retail traders, because they see that, oh yeah, you know, we've entered into the New York kill zone, or you start seeing some new order blocks being formed or whatever, it does not matter as long as you are within a range. The areas of asymmetric risk when it comes to range trading above the range high and below the range low. Not in the middle. Anything within the middle is where you get chopped up and basically where you lose money. And this is where the majority of retail fails because they are impatient. They can't wait for these range highs or range lows to get swept first prior to taking a move.
