A killzone is a time window you declare as the only one where you take positions. The term comes from ICT methods, where it means the London and New York opening windows. In a journal it is more simply the window you chose, which from then on becomes verifiable.
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A killzone is first a decision, not an observation of the market: you declare a window, and anything taken outside it becomes a deviation. The word comes from ICT methods, which use it for the windows around the London and New York opens, reputed to be the most active on indices and currencies.
What makes the notion useful in a journal has nothing to do with the theory that named it. A trade's opening hour is data your statement already contains, just like the price: it is not declared, it is not forgotten, and it cannot be flattered. It is therefore one of the rare filters whose measurement costs nothing.
And it is often the most profitable filter a journal surfaces, for an unusual reason: it demands no new skill. It only demands not trading at certain hours, which is the one improvement in this glossary you obtain by doing less.
The calculation to run is simple and is done once: split the expectancy of your in-window trades from your out-of-window ones. If the second is clearly negative on a decent sample, you have just found a rule that costs nothing to apply, and its effect shows from the following month.
Watch the direction of reading, though. A gap can come from the hour or from what the hour attracts: out-of-window trades are often catch-up trades, taken after a disappointing morning. In that case it is not the hour that costs, it is the state you trade in at that hour, and the useful rule is not the same one.
The classic mistake. Taking ICT killzones as a universal truth. The hours that matter depend on your market, your time zone and your method, and a US stock trader has no use for a window set on the London open. The right window is the one your own data points at, and one measurement finds it.
It is a time window you declare as the only one where you take positions. The term comes from ICT methods, which use it for the windows around the London and New York opens. In a journal it is simply the window you chose, which then becomes verifiable.
ICT methods use the name for the windows around the London and New York opens, reputed to be the most active on indices and currencies. The detail of those sessions and what is looked for in them is covered in the Academy lesson on sessions, which is the right place for the depth.
By comparing the expectancy of your trades hour by hour, on a sample of at least thirty trades per slot. The window that emerges is almost never the one you would have guessed, and it depends as much on your state at that hour as on market activity.
Because it is already in your statement, so free to measure, and because applying it demands no new skill. It is the one improvement in this glossary you obtain by doing less: not trading at certain hours.
No. An empty list of windows simply removes the rule from the discipline score, it does not drop it to zero. Declaring nothing and missing everything are two different things, and the score does not confuse them.
Your windows are defined in Settings, under Trading and discipline, and they are expressed in your profile's time zone. Two windows are proposed to start with, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, and they are meant to be replaced by yours.
They then serve in two places. The discipline score counts the share of your trades opened inside a window, and the live session alerts you when you open outside one, during the session. An empty list of windows removes the rule from the score instead of dropping it to zero: declaring nothing is not the same as missing everything.
To go deeper on this: read the full guide. Every term is gathered in the glossary.