Atlas Sessions (NQ) guide

What this indicator is

Atlas Sessions (NQ), by AlgoTrader NQGC, divides the NQ futures day into four sessions. At each session open it shows how often a session like this one has historically taken out the previous session's high, its low, both, or neither. It is free on any TradingView plan.

The four figures add to 100%. They are measured frequencies from seventeen years of NQ history, not forecasts. A 60% share on the Take high only row means that, in the measured history, comparable sessions took the previous high and left the low untouched 60% of the time.

This is classification, not prediction, and not a signal. It answers "what usually happens from here", so that your own analysis starts from the base rate rather than from a guess.

The four sessions

The sessions are fixed, in New York time. On the chart and in the table they are named Asia, London, NYAM and NYPM.

What it gives you

The one idea behind the figures

Distance decides it. How far the previous session's high and low sit from where the new session opens dominates everything else about whether those levels get taken. Put like that it sounds obvious. It is not how most people read a chart, and it is not what much of the popular session lore says.

Our research examined several widely taught ways of reading the relationship between sessions. Once distance was accounted for, they had little or nothing left to add: levels that look special usually turn out simply to be close. That is why these figures can behave differently from received wisdom, and it hands you one habit worth building.

Session identity

Which session you are in matters too, in a way you can use. At the same distance, NY AM takes levels more readily than NY PM, and both New York sessions take them more readily than Asia or London. NY AM's lead is concentrated around the 09:30 cash open and fades quickly after it, as described under The NY AM cliff below.

Why the same distance can read differently

The same distance in points can carry a different figure from one session to the next, because the figures allow for how active the market has recently been. A given number of points is a shorter trip on a busy day than on a quiet one, and the shares reflect that.

Setup

Symbol: NQ or MNQ futures only. On any other symbol the warning row reads "Non-NQ symbol: tables are NQ 2009-26".

Plan: Atlas Sessions (NQ) is free on any TradingView plan. Add it from its TradingView page ↗, then pick a timeframe that suits your plan's chart history, as below.

Chart history

The session statistics need five completed trading days of chart history. A free TradingView plan holds about three and a half days of 1-minute bars, so on a free plan use a 3-minute or 5-minute chart. While history is short, the shares show a dash and the warning row reads "Not enough history yet (needs 5 days): on a free plan use 3m or 5m".

More history also feeds the running tally in the Hit rate row. A higher timeframe loads more days, which is why the optional Recal n row suggests a 15-minute view when its count is thin.

Timeframes

The at-open figures are set by the clock and the session open, not by bar count, so they are the same on every supported timeframe. What changes with the timeframe is how finely the session is timed.

Settings at a glance

Every setting is in the indicator's settings dialog, grouped as below, with its default after the colon.

Weekends and holiday breaks

The first session after the weekend, Sunday evening's Asia session, is compared with Friday's NY PM across the market closure. That pairing is treated as unvalidated, so the session is greyed and the warning row reads "Weekend wrap: greyed (unvalidated)". The same happens after other long breaks in trading, such as holiday closures and early closes. Unlike a contract-roll session, a greyed weekend session still counts in the Hit rate row.

Contract rolls

On the session where the continuous chart switches to the next contract, the previous session's levels are shifted into the new contract's prices so they line up with the bars in front of you. That session is greyed, left out of the running tally and of the optional Recal n count, and the warning row shows the size of the shift: "Contract roll: prior levels shifted" followed by the amount in points (on a chart already showing another warning the line just adds "contract roll"). If your chart was open across the roll, reload it once so the shift is picked up. On a back-adjusted continuous chart the prices are already continuous, so nothing is shifted and no roll warning appears.

Reading the chart

The level lines

The previous session's high and low are drawn from the start of the session that made them, across the session now open, in that session's colour (untick Use session colours to choose one colour of your own). Each line carries a label at its left end, above the high and below the low, giving the session name, "High" or "Low", the price, and a share for the session now open.

When price trades through a level, its label switches to "TAKEN" with the time in New York time, and the level stays taken for the rest of the session. A level counts as taken only when price trades at least one tick beyond it; an exact touch does not count.

Only the current session's levels are drawn. Earlier sessions keep their shaded boxes but not their level lines, so the chart always shows what is in play now rather than a history of past levels.

The equilibrium line (S2 EQ line, on by default) marks the midpoint of the previous session's range. The Open vs EQ row in the table records which side of it the session opened. When a session is greyed, for a weekend wrap or a contract roll, its level lines, labels and the share figures turn grey.

The four shares and the level labels

At each session open you get four percentages that add to 100%: take the high only, take the low only, take both, and neither, meaning the session stays inside the previous range. These are at-open figures: they are set when the session opens, matched on the session's situation at that moment, and they do not change until the next session.

In the default mode, each level's label repeats that side's "only" share from the table: the high's label shows the Take high only figure and the low's label shows Take low only. To read how often the high was taken at all, whatever the low did, add Take high only and Take both sides.

Live mode (optional, off by default)

Tick Live-update % (per-side marginal, advanced) in the Display group and the level labels switch to a live figure, "P(take)", that updates every bar. It answers: given that this level has not been taken yet, where price is now and how much of the session remains, how often was it still taken before the session ended? It is a separate measurement, not a rescaling of the at-open shares.

Each side is read on its own, so the two live figures do not add up with the shares in the table, and the table's four shares stay at their at-open values. The live figure for one side does not depend on whether the other side has already gone. Live mode also adds a Live P(take) H/L row to the table, which shows TAKEN for a side once it has been taken. A label showing "..." has no live figure to show, usually because chart history is short.

The ~ and < marks

A "~" in front of a share (Mark era-unstable readings (~), on by default) marks one of the few readings that drifted more than the rest across the market eras measured. It is shown rather than hidden; give that figure less weight.

In live mode, a "<" in front of P(take) marks a level that is very far away. Read it as "less than" the figure shown.

When no shares are shown

The four shares appear only when the session opens inside the previous session's range. If it opens beyond the previous high or low, that level is marked TAKEN on the first bar, the share rows show a dash, and the session is not scored in the Hit rate row. In live mode the untaken side still shows its live figure. Dashes also appear while chart history is short, as described under Setup.

Median penetration guides (optional, off by default)

Tick Median penetration lines in the Display group to draw two dotted lines beyond the previous high and low, in the current session's colour, labelled "Med pen high" and "Med pen low". They show how far beyond each level price has typically travelled during the session once that level was taken. Asia and London typically travel less beyond a level; the New York sessions push further. The same distances, in points, are in the table's Med pen up / dn row.

They ship off so that a first run shows the levels and the shares on their own, which is the product; the guides are geometry laid over the top. This is measured drift, not momentum: use it for target geometry, not as evidence that a break will run. Hover a Med pen label, or the table row, to see the typical push 15 and 30 minutes after a take and over the full session.

Push levels (optional, off by default)

15m/30m push levels, also in the Display group, adds dotted levels labelled "15m" and "30m" beyond each previous high and low: the typical further push 15 and 30 minutes after that level is taken. They are drawn from the session open on both sides, because their prices are known in advance; the clock only starts if the level trades. They roll at each new session. The setting's own description calls them a pace guide, not an edge.

Between them, the level, the penetration guide and the push levels give you destination candidates grounded in measured history: places price has tended to reach from a situation like this one, rather than round numbers.

Quarter levels (optional, off by default)

Project 25% / 75% levels, in the Level lines group, adds the quarter marks of the previous session's range to the midpoint already drawn, spanning the same stretch as the EQ line. They are dashed and grey by default so they read as secondary to the high and low, which remain the levels the figures are about.

They are context, not measured figures: no share in this indicator belongs to a quarter level. What they give you is a sense of where price sits inside the previous range. The difference between drifting just under the high and sitting mid-range is visible at a glance, and it is exactly the distance the shares respond to.

Session boxes and names

Each session's range is shaded in its colour (Session boxes, on by default), and the names of the last four sessions sit above their boxes. The session whose high and low are in play is named on its level labels instead.

Reading the status table

The table sits at the top right by default and reads top to bottom in the order you should read it: the score, then the context block under Previous Session Summary, then the measured figures under Probability Metrics. Rows named after a session use the previous session's name, for example "London range" during NY AM.

The Hit rate row, deliberately second from the top, is the honesty check, and it is worth knowing what good looks like. The at-open shares imply roughly 57% accuracy at picking the top outcome. The naive benchmark, always picking the most common outcome overall, gets about 42%. A uniform guess gets 25%. So the useful comparison is not 57% against 100%; it is 57% against 42%.

The warning row

A row marked "!" appears at the foot of the table whenever something would degrade the read. When more than one condition applies, the first is shown in full and the others follow in short form after a "|".

The checkmarks

As the session runs, a ✓ appears beside the share that has actually happened. Take the high and nothing else, and the tick sits on Take high only; if the low goes later, the tick moves down to Take both sides, because that is now the outcome in force. On the First sweep H / L row the tick marks the side that went first, which is the row's whole subject. If both sides go within the same bar, the row cannot tell which was first and shows no tick there, one more reason to prefer a 1 to 5-minute chart.

Inside session never ticks while the session is live, and the reason is worth stating: it is the only one of the four that is an absence. The others are events: a level trades, and the tick lands. Inside is settled only by the session ending without either level trading, at which point the table has already rolled forward to the next session. A tick there would have to be a prediction that nothing further will happen, which is not what these figures are.

Taken together, the ticks turn the four shares into a running scorecard: you can see at a glance which of the four the session chose, and how that compares with the share it was given.

Compact mode, for phones and small screens

Compact table (mobile), in the Table group, strips the table back to the rows you need at a glance: the header, Hit rate, the four shares and First sweep. The Previous Session Summary block, Med pen, Sample size and the two divider rows are hidden.

It is off by default and changes nothing about the figures, only which rows are drawn. Live P(take), Recal n and any warning row still appear when they apply.

One thing to be aware of: Sample size is one of the rows compact mode hides, and it is the row that tells you how well supported the current figures are. If a number looks surprising on a phone, switch the full table back on before acting on it. To hide the table altogether, set Table position to Off.

The NY AM cliff

Previous-session level takes in NY AM are largely a cash-open event. From 07:30 to 09:30 the passing time costs an untouched level relatively little. From the 09:30 open, the remaining probability is concentrated in roughly the first half hour, and it falls away quickly after that.

Hold the distance fixed and an untouched level's live figure at about 10:00 is typically well below its 09:30 value: around half for levels that were not close to begin with, a smaller drop for levels that were already near. The decline continues through the rest of the session.

The practical consequence: waiting for a level to get taken later in NY AM is, historically, waiting for something that has mostly either happened or not by about 10:00. A plan built on a level take has its statistical tailwind front-loaded, strongest early and fading with the clock, and the indicator shows you that fade rather than leaving you to feel it out.

To watch it happen, turn on Live-update % (per-side marginal, advanced). Without it the label shows the at-open share, which is fixed for the session and does not decay. With it, the label's P(take) and the Live P(take) H/L row show the decay as it happens.

The scenarios table (optional, off by default)

Show scenarios table, in the Table group, adds a second small table that states the figures as if-then rows. Scenarios position sets where it sits (Bottom right by default), and it uses the status table's theme and text size.

The header names the previous session, for example "London levels". Before any take, the first row, "▲ London high taken →", reads "low also …% · run +… pts": if the high is taken, how often the low was also taken before the session ended, and the typical run beyond the high. The second row mirrors it for the low. The percentage is worked out from the four shares in the status table: of the comparable sessions that took the high, the share that took both.

Rows latch as events occur, showing "TAKEN" and the time, and read "both sides done" once both levels have gone. With live mode on, the figure after a take switches to the other side's live P(take) and is tagged "(live)", so you always know which one you are reading.

It is the same measured information stated a different way: as the next question you would ask once a level goes. Hover the table to see the 15 and 30-minute pace beyond each level.

Optional contextual adjustments

Two adjustments ship with the indicator, both off by default, in the Contextual adjustments group:

• London high-side tilt (Asia context) adjusts London's high-side shares, Take high only and Take both sides, using the character of the Asian session that preceded it; the other two shares rescale.
• Day-of-week tilt (NY AM and NY PM, low side) nudges the low-side shares of NY AM and NY PM, Take low only and Take both sides, by weekday; the other two shares rescale.

The four shares still add to 100% with an adjustment on, and the shift is modest. Read the unadjusted figures first. An adjustment changes the at-open shares, and with them the level labels in the default mode, the scenarios rows and the Hit rate's pick; the live P(take) figures are not adjusted. No row in the table shows that an adjustment is on, so if your figures differ from someone else's chart, check this group first.

Both had to clear a deliberately demanding bar in our own testing before they were allowed into the script.

A third candidate did not make it through, and it is worth saying so. It looked strong in early testing, but closer checking showed that its apparent strength was an artefact of the research data rather than anything the market was doing. Once that was corrected the effect collapsed, and it was cut. You are not using it because it did not hold up.

How the figures were made

Seventeen years of NQ at one-minute resolution, 2009 to 2026, reduced to many thousands of session-to-session handoffs.

Everything the indicator displays is a measured frequency built into the script. The chart estimates nothing in front of you: it looks up what happened, in comparable situations, in the measured history. The live figures are a separate measurement of their own.

Notable results from a long and deliberately sceptical piece of proprietary research, all of which shaped what you have:

• Popular session-reading rules added little once distance was known. That negative result is why this guide asks you to look at distance first.
• The structure is stable across eras. A search for patterns that only work in the modern market came back empty. Market growth changed the scale of everything, which the figures already allow for, and left the underlying structure alone.
• A few readings drift. The era check flagged only a small number of readings as drifting; they carry the ~ mark on the chart rather than being hidden.
• Scheduled news does not break the figures. The obvious worry is that a major economic release lands inside a session and leaves that day behaving unlike the history behind the figures. Days carrying the major scheduled releases were compared directly with ordinary days. The sessions are long enough that a single release is diluted rather than dominating, and the difference that remained was too small to change a reading. That is why the indicator has no news handling. The one exception is noted under Honest limitations.

The chart output has been checked against the research data by replaying sessions and comparing the values, holiday early closes included.

The optional Live recalibration blend, in the Recalibration group and off by default, blends the built-in figures with outcomes counted from the sessions loaded on your chart. It is weighted towards the built-in figures by Recal strength (150 by default; higher trusts the built-in figures more), so that a small sample cannot overwhelm them. It acts on the live figures only, so it has no visible effect unless live mode is on, and it needs a deep chart to matter. The Recal n row shows how many sessions it has counted.

The built-in figures are fixed in each published version. A re-measurement reaches your chart only as a new version of the script on TradingView.

Honest limitations

• Frequencies, not predictions. Every figure describes the measured history, not today.
• Session boundaries are fixed. They are part of the measurement; changing them would mean re-running the whole study, so they are not a setting.
• Some situations are rare. A few combinations rest on small samples and vary more across eras. They are descriptive; the Sample size row tags them Low.
• NY PM is measured slightly short of its official close. The history behind it stops a little before 17:00.
• Measured on the past. Consistency across market eras is encouraging, but forward use is the real test.
• CPI and payrolls days are the one place a release shows through. On those days the London high was taken during NY AM somewhat more often than the figures expect, by roughly eight percentage points. Every other session and side came back in line, but it is worth knowing.
• History is needed. Five completed trading days on the chart; on a free plan, use a 3-minute or 5-minute chart.
• No shares when a session opens outside the previous range. Such sessions are also left out of the Hit rate row.
• NQ and MNQ only.
• Take probability is context, not a trade in itself. A level being likely to get taken does not, on its own, make it a profitable place to act. The next section explains how to use the figures; read it before acting on any of them.

Using it in practice

Use it for sequencing and context, not as an entry trigger

This guidance follows directly from what the figures measure. The take probability tells you what a session is likely to do to a level: which side tends to go first, whether the session is likely to stay inside, how far price typically travels once a level goes. That is real, measured information about session behaviour.

What it does not tell you is that the level is a good place to trade. A previous session's high or low is barely more "respected" than any other price sitting the same distance away, so the value is not that the level is special. The value is knowing what the session usually does and staging your own plan around it: the same entries you would have taken anyway, now taken with the base rate in view. Use it to decide sequencing, whether to expect range or expansion, and where your own setup is working against the usual pattern. The entry logic remains yours; this supplies the base rate it should be judged against.

Read that way, the indicator does what it was built to do. Read as "the level will hold" or "the level will break, so trade it", it will disappoint, and rightly so.

Habits worth building

• Start with distance. Before reading any percentage, look at how far away the levels are. The percentages are mostly a more precise version of that.
• Use the NY AM cliff. It is a clear timing asymmetry: in NY AM, most of the tailwind for a level take arrives in the half hour after 09:30.
• Use Inside session as a range warning. A high inside share is the history telling you this session has often gone nowhere. That is worth knowing before setting up for a breakout.
• Use First sweep for sequencing, not direction. It tells you which side has tended to go first, which matters for how you stage entries, not whether the session closes up or down.
• Watch the Hit rate row. It is your own audit, on your own chart.
• Let it set the day's temperature. When the shares say range, you can be selective about breakouts that history says often go nowhere from here; when a level is within typical reach, you have a destination supported by seventeen years of measurement rather than a hunch. A plan set at the open, with the odds known, is easier to follow than one improvised mid-session.

Using it alongside Atlas IB

Atlas Sessions and Atlas IB, also free, answer different questions about the same day, and the difference is in what they measure from.

Atlas Sessions measures against the previous session, using fixed reference points that exist before the session opens and never move. Does this session take the previous session's high, its low, both, or neither?

Atlas IB measures against the current window. Price builds its own range in a chosen 30 or 60-minute window, and the targets come from that range, so nothing is known until the window completes.

Sessions therefore gives you the session frame, whether this is likely to be a session that expands and takes levels or one that sits inside, while IB gives you the execution frame within it: specific targets, distances in points, and how often they were reached. The natural pairing is the 09:30 cash open, where a 60-minute IB window from 09:30 forms inside the NY AM session that Sessions is describing.

The important caveat runs against instinct. When the two agree, that is not two independent confirmations. Both ask which level price reaches first, on the same instrument, and both are driven largely by how far away the levels are, so agreement is largely the same fact stated twice. Read agreement as coherence, not as doubled evidence, and do not size up because both point the same way.

Disagreement is the more informative case. A high Inside session share alongside a wide IB target says the target is probably too far for the day you are in. A strong session-level lean alongside an IB abstain means you have a directional expectation with no window structure to express it through. Either is worth knowing before you commit.

The practical order: read Sessions first for the session's character, then IB for the geometry inside it. Sessions rarely changes what you do at the window level; it changes how far you expect the day to travel at all.

Tracking it yourself

The Hit rate row scores the at-open shares on the history loaded on your chart. We also keep a public record of what Atlas Sessions showed at the NY AM open and how each session closed: week by week from August to September 2026, and month by month from October 2026. See the NQ Sessions record.

FAQ

Is it free?

Yes, on any TradingView plan. On a free plan, use a 3-minute or 5-minute chart so the five days of history it needs are loaded. Add it on TradingView ↗

Does it repaint?

No. The at-open shares are fixed at the open. Live mode is explicitly a live feature and is labelled as such; it does not rewrite earlier sessions. If a contract roll happens while your chart is open, reload once and the roll session is handled as described under Setup.

Why are the numbers the same on 1m and 15m?

The at-open figures are set by the clock and the session open, not by bar count, so every supported timeframe shows the same shares. Higher timeframes load more history, which grows the Hit rate sample, but the table flags 6 to 30-minute charts as coarse because takes, ticks and the live figure then move in whole bars.

Why do the shares show a dash?

Usually one of two reasons: fewer than five completed trading days are loaded, in which case the warning row says so, or the session opened beyond the previous high or low, so no at-open shares apply.

Why is the session grey?

It is either the first session after the weekend or another long break ("Weekend wrap: greyed (unvalidated)"), or the session on which the continuous contract rolled ("Contract roll: prior levels shifted …"). The warning row says which.

Can I change the session times?

No. They are part of the measurement, not a display option.

Why is my hit rate not higher?

Because the fair benchmark is about 42%, not 100%. Four-way classification with a 25% uniform baseline is a hard problem, and beating the naive favourite by around fifteen points is the result. Compare the two figures on the row itself: what was realised against what the shares implied.

Can I use it on other instruments?

No. It was measured on NQ. Gold has its own build, measured separately on gold: see Atlas Sessions.

Can I see the underlying figures?

No. The script is published with protected source, because the measured figures are the work. Everything you need to read them is on the chart and on this page.

Support

• support@algotradernqgc.com
• @AlgoTraderNQGC

Questions about interpreting a specific session are welcome; send a screenshot.