Session plan

The CME trade date runs from 18:00 to 17:00 New York time (from 00:00 to 23:00 in Paris most of the year). The previous day high and low cover the previous complete CME trade date; the previous day close is the last price before 17:00. The cash session runs from 09:30 to 16:00 in New York (from 15:30 to 22:00 in Paris). The overnight session starts at the 18:00 reopen. The midnight open is the first price after 00:00 in New York; the 09:30 open only appears once it has passed. The week opens on Sunday at 18:00, the month on the first CME trade date of the month.

The distance is the level minus the reference price, in NQ points: positive above the price, negative below. Under each level: the date and Paris time of the bar that formed it. A level marked “in progress” can still move.

Prices come from the Yahoo Finance NQ=F continuous contract, which moves to the next contract a few days before the quarterly expiry, sometimes mid-session. The switch day is detected automatically. Levels formed before the switch are shifted by the gap between the two contracts (additive adjustment): the table says so under the level, with the original price. MNQ and NQ trade at the same price.

Implied: one daily standard deviation equals price × VXN / 100 / √252. The VXN is the Nasdaq-100 volatility index computed by Cboe from options. For a random walk, the range (high minus low) averages about 1.6 standard deviations (√(8/π)): this is the “equivalent range”.

Realized: Wilder 14-day ATR (as on TradingView) and quartiles of the range of the last 60 complete CME trade dates, excluding contract switch days; for the cash session, the 09:30 to 16:00 New York range on 5-minute bars. The share covered (“Covered so far today”) compares today's range with the ATR.

Magnitude only, never direction: the direction depends on the surprise, which nobody knows in advance. On 5-minute bars, we measure the absolute gap between the close of the bar ending at the release time and the price 5, 30 and 60 minutes later, as well as the maximum excursion. This history only covers a few months, hence a small N. On 1-hour bars, we measure the window that contains the release (for 08:30 in New York: 08:00-10:00, which includes the cash open), over about two years.

The ordinary day is the same measure, at the same time, on days without a release. Medians are shown in points at the current price, from the % moves. Release dates come from the official calendars (BLS, BEA, Census Bureau, Federal Reserve). Events without a collected history (ISM, jobless claims, speeches) are listed without a reaction.

Most common ICT hours, in New York time: Asia 19:00-22:00, London 02:00-05:00, New York open 07:00-09:00, London close 10:00-12:00, and the three Silver Bullets (03:00-04:00, 10:00-11:00, 14:00-15:00). They vary between sources. They are converted to Paris time for the session date: the gap goes from 6 to 5 hours during the weeks when only one of the two countries has changed clocks.

Sources: innercircletrader.net, ictkillzone.com, chartwhisperer.ca.

NQ=F and VXN prices: Yahoo Finance, delayed by about 10 minutes. This week's calendar: ForexFactory, through the site's news engine; beyond that, the official calendars of the BLS, the BEA, the Census Bureau and the Federal Reserve, and ECB dates. Context: the site's bias engine. The plan is recalculated every 15 minutes on weekdays by a program on our server, without AI: the texts are templates filled with the figures. This is not investment advice.