The lunch hour dead zone

Sessions & Killzones

Where volume goes to nap

Around midday New York time, roughly noon to 1 PM ET, volume regularly dries up. Desks step away and ranges tighten. The moves that do happen often carry little follow-through.

Breakouts here deserve suspicion

A breakout during the lunch dead zone deserves extra suspicion. Without the volume to back it, that breakout is more likely to fade than the same move during the morning killzone.

Permission to step away

Many disciplined traders simply skip the lunch hour altogether, treating the dead time as a built-in break rather than forcing a trade into a low-quality window.