Jonathan: EUR/USD and GBP/USD at the London Open

TL;DR: Jonathan is from South Wales. He started looking at markets in 2014, then came back in 2023 while working in the police. He trades forex, mainly EUR/USD and GBP/USD, on the 5-minute chart around the London open. He reports a $100K Alpha Capital account and about 6% at the time of this conversation. He is still part-time. Those figures are his. They are not typical and they are not guaranteed.

Watch the full Jonathan interview on YouTube

Jonathan trader profile

What does Jonathan trade?

Forex. He names EUR/USD and GBP/USD as the pairs he actually uses. He treats them as close cousins: if the setup is cleaner on one, he takes that one.

GBP/JPY is the extra pair. He calls it wickier than he likes, and he is only opening it up because EUR/USD had been hard for a couple of weeks. He ties that stretch to US news and to moves he connects with comments from Donald Trump. A watchlist of about six pairs, which he tried earlier, got in the way. One pair, learned properly, is the version he kept.

He does not hold through the weekend on purpose. On a 4-hour example he replays, price gaps. He calls weekend holds dicey while headlines are moving the market.

Another forex interview on this site, with a higher-time-frame process, is KayzFX on the swing switch. Ajay Morris trades USD/JPY and AUD/JPY. The plans are on the product page.

How does the London setup work?

He wants the London open. The first thing he checks is a line that sets the bias for that session. If it is flat, he waits for a zone to break, for price to come back, and for the move to continue. That is break and retest. He trades it on the 5-minute chart.

The entry is the middle of the zone, the 50% mark. The stop is about twice the height of the zone. On the chart he shares, a zone of 4.6 pips becomes a 10-pip stop after he rounds it. A later zone of about 6 pips becomes a 12-pip stop. He is looking for 1:2.

Once the trade is up 1%, he moves the stop to breakeven. He would rather give up the rest of the move than watch an open gain fall all the way back to the original stop.

The piece he is still changing is the exit. An ATR trailing stop is there so a winner can run past 1:2. On the replay, the same long goes from 1:2 to about 1:2.7, and he uses an extra $700 on a $100K account as a picture of what that extra fraction could be. That is one replay he walks through on screen. It is not a closed result and it is not a performance fee.

He will still take the trade off around 1:4 if it gets there, even if the ATR line has not crossed. He says a floating gain at that size is too easy to turn into a guess. A setup can be clean and still fail. He wants people watching the video to hear that, because both examples he shows are winners.

The indicators on the chart are a session box for London and New York, boxes for support and resistance, the 100 EMA for direction, and the ATR trailing stop. He learned on a naked chart first. The boxes match levels he says he would have drawn by hand. They are there so he can see the level faster.

He also scrolls to a 4-hour break and retest from just after Christmas, with a zone of 32 pips and a stop near 64 pips. He is showing that the same idea can sit on a higher chart. He is clear that swing trading is the version he cannot stick to.

What the evaluation is, before any of this is copied onto an account, is in what a trading evaluation is.

What happened before the London routine?

In 2014 he watched a BBC documentary about retail traders and downloaded a phone app. He is not sure whether it was Trading 212 or Plus500. He thinks the position was gold or a stock, with a large size, on a simulated account. He woke up down about $60,000 to $70,000. That number was not money leaving his bank. It was the wakeup. He went to BabyPips, did not know what to do next, and left it.

In 2023 he was in the police. Shifts ran 14 or 15 hours. He would come home and study with an education provider he does not name. He had seen evaluations become easier to find, and he decided he had to make the work fit around the job. The calm he used at work did not transfer in a straight line. Seeing an open gain made him want to grab it. Seeing a loss made him want to add.

The early version of the strategy came from a YouTube video on break and retest. Support and resistance on their own were not enough, because those levels break. He kept the idea, then built the entry and the exit himself so they matched how he actually sits in a trade.

What does he say about the loss?

The hardest part was taking one. He remembers learning a strategy, deciding he was finished, then losing and immediately buying. When that failed he sold, then sold again. He hit the daily loss limit on an evaluation and could not explain where the composure went.

He still hates being wrong. The line he repeats is that sticking to the plan is the job. A few green trades can be luck. Doing the same thing again after a red day is the part he counts.

He writes in a diary every morning. The reason on the page is his family, a house with a garden, and room for his dogs. He wants that reason in his head before he presses buy or sell. He also names The Chimp Paradox as the book that helped him notice the moment he was about to break the plan. He is clear that reading it did nothing until he used it.

He lost an earlier account. He says passing the next evaluation felt better than the first, because he had started to wonder whether the first one was a fluke.

What does he say about Alpha Capital?

He reports a $100K account, and about 6% with Alpha Capital at the time of the interview. The host introduces him as a six-figure trader who has received thousands of dollars. Jonathan's own figure for the result is the 6%. The $100K is the size of the account he describes, not a profit. Passing an evaluation does not guarantee income.

He chose the firm after watching videos of the people who work there, and after a line he remembers as built for traders. He praises the execution he has had, and he says emails came back quickly. He mentions WhatsApp as something he has used, and he says that is not available to everyone all the time. He is not in the Discord. He runs a small group of his own and prefers to keep to himself, while still telling other people that a community can shorten the lonely part.

Asked what he would add, he points at being able to request a performance fee without a long wait, and he thinks that had just been put in place. His reason is practical. Sitting at 4% or 5% and waiting made him not want to take the next trade, because the open gain and the fee were pulling in opposite directions.

Over the next year he wants a larger account, somewhere from $500K to $600K, and a life he sets himself. He is still part-time, with full-time as the aim. He tells viewers the same work is available to them if they put the time in. That is his encouragement. It is not a promise.

What is worth copying from this interview?

Copy the sequence.

• Two forex pairs, not a watchlist of six
• London open, a session bias, then break and retest on the 5-minute chart
• Stop placed from the height of the zone, and a 1:2 target written down before the click
• Move on when EUR/USD is too headline-driven, instead of forcing it
• A loss that ends the idea, instead of an instant trade the other way

Do not copy the 6%, the $100K account, the $700 illustration, or the 4-hour replay as a result you are owed. Alpha Capital evaluations and Qualified Accounts use simulated funds. Performance fees are based on eligible simulated results.

More interviews are in the Alpha Capital interview library.

Questions about Jonathan's forex trading

Who is Jonathan?

Jonathan is a trader from South Wales. He was in the police and still trades part-time. He looked at markets in 2014, left, and came back in 2023. He says he has been trading for about two years.

What pairs does he trade?

EUR/USD and GBP/USD. He sometimes looks at GBP/JPY when EUR/USD is too choppy for the setup. He tried a list of about six pairs and found it overwhelming.

Is the $100K a trading profit?

No. It is the Alpha Capital account size he reports. He puts the result on that account at about 6% when this was recorded. The host's introduction describes him as a six-figure trader who has received thousands of dollars. Use Jonathan's 6% for the result, and treat both lines as what was said on the video.

How does he enter at the London open?

On the 5-minute chart he waits for a support or resistance zone to break and get retested. The entry is the middle of the zone. The stop is about twice the zone. He wants 1:2, and he moves the stop to breakeven once the trade is up 1%. A 100 EMA sets the directional bias. An ATR trailing stop is what he is using when he tries to let a winner run.

What happened on the simulated account in 2014?

He put a large size on what he thinks was gold or a stock, in a phone app, and woke up down about $60,000 to $70,000. He says it was a simulated account. He did not lose that sum from his bank.

Did he lose an account later?

Yes. He says an earlier account was lost, and that passing the next evaluation felt more solid, because he had doubted whether the first pass was luck. He still names taking a loss, instead of reversing straight away, as the hardest part.

The figures in this interview are not typical or guaranteed. Alpha Capital evaluations and Qualified Accounts use simulated funds. Performance fees are based on eligible simulated results. Simulated results do not reflect real trading outcomes. This is general information, not investment advice.