ICT 2024 Mentorship Lecture 3 — NDOG, NWOG & the PM Session

What Lecture 3 Covers

Lecture 3 of the ICT 2024 Mentorship turns from clock windows to reference levels: the two opening gaps the algorithm consults for days at a time — the New Day Opening Gap (17:00 close → 18:00 reopen) and the New Week Opening Gap (Friday close → Sunday open) — and demonstrates the framework in the PM session, where the morning’s unfinished business gets settled against them. The sequence is unchanged; what changes is that the pools being raided and the addresses being delivered to are gap edges and their consequent encroachment midpoints rather than session highs and lows.

This is the lecture that quietly rewires how a student sees their chart. Most traders treat gaps as events — something that happened at 18:00 and is now history. The mentorship treats them as standing furniture: horizontal levels that persist for days, that the algorithm references again and again, and that explain a large share of the reversals which otherwise appear to happen "at nothing." Once the NDOG and NWOG are permanently on the chart, the PM session stops looking random.

The Two Gaps as Standing Reference

The NDOG is manufactured by the calendar every trading day: futures close at 17:00 ET, reopen at 18:00, and the strip of prices in between is never traded. It has two edges and a midpoint, and all three behave as levels — the midpoint (its consequent encroachment) most reliably of all. The NWOG is the same idea at weekly scale: Friday’s 17:00 close to Sunday’s 18:00 reopen, a wider strip with correspondingly heavier gravity, and the reason so many Monday and Tuesday reversals land on a line drawn before the week began.

The lecture’s practical instruction is to keep a rolling set of them on the chart — not just today’s. Recent NDOGs stay relevant for several sessions; recent NWOGs for several weeks. What emerges is a ladder of horizontal zones covering the range price has been working in, and the PM session in particular tends to deliver between them. This is also where the RTH versus ETH chart question becomes decisive: the NDOG is invisible on a regular-hours-only chart, so a trader using RTH settings is missing half the furniture and wondering why the afternoon keeps turning at empty space.

Why the Gaps Work at All

It is fair to ask why a level created by an exchange’s maintenance schedule should matter to anyone. The framework’s answer is mechanical rather than mystical, and it holds up: a gap is a price range at which no trading occurred, which means no positions were established there. When price later returns to that range it finds an area with unusually little existing interest — a clean stretch in which large orders can be worked without the friction of resting inventory. Institutions filling size prefer exactly that, and the algorithm’s tendency to deliver price back into these voids follows from the preference rather than from any pattern-magic.

That also explains why the consequent encroachment — the midpoint — outperforms the edges as a reaction level. The middle of an untraded range is the point of maximum cleanliness: furthest from the last prices at which anyone was actually positioned on either side. It is the same logic that makes the midpoint of a fair value gap the preferred entry throughout the rest of the framework, applied at a scale the calendar manufactures for free every single day.

The PM Session — Where the Morning Gets Settled

The afternoon’s character follows directly from what the morning left undone, and the lecture frames it as inheritance. If the morning delivered its objective, the PM session tends to work back toward a gap reference — the nearest NDOG or the NWOG’s CE — in a retracement that the closing flow from London helps along. If the morning left the draw unpaid, the PM session is the collections department: the 13:30–16:00 stretch runs the outstanding delivery, frequently completing it in the final forty-five minutes when closing-auction imbalance arrives.

The sequence inside the window is the series’ standard one, with gap levels supplying both halves. The raid is often into a gap zone rather than through a session extreme — price dips inside last night’s NDOG, takes the orders resting there, and reverses; the objective is the next gap reference up or down. Displacement and the 5-minute close remain mandatory. What the lecture adds is a specific piece of judgement: a gap that price has already traded cleanly through earlier in the day is spent and should be demoted, while an untouched gap edge remains fully live. Marking which are which before 13:30 is the whole of the afternoon’s preparation.

Walkthrough — A PM Session Between Two Gaps

The map at 13:15: NQ had a strong morning that stalled forty points shy of its draw at 24,880 — unpaid business. Last night’s NDOG sits at 24,772–24,786 (CE 24,779), untouched all session. The week’s NWOG is higher, at 24,902–24,948 with its CE at 24,925. The read writes itself: "The afternoon owes 24,880; the near NDOG is the discount it will reach for first."

13:42 — the raid into the gap: lunch drift resolves lower and price presses into the NDOG, wicking 24,769 — through the lower edge, orders taken — before closing back inside. 13:56 — confirmation: a 5-minute candle displaces up and closes through the 13:10 swing at 24,801, leaving a gap at 24,783–24,793 that overlaps the NDOG’s own CE. Two references at one address.

14:07 — entry: long 24,788 at the overlap; stop 24,761 beneath the raid wick (27 points). Objective the unpaid morning draw at 24,880, with the NWOG’s lower edge beyond it as the stretch. The delivery: a grind through the afternoon, the morning high reclaimed at 15:02, and the closing-imbalance window doing what it does — 24,884 prints at 15:47. Exit 24,876 for 3.3R, flat before the settlement machinery. The whole trade travelled from one piece of standing furniture to another, and neither was drawn that day.

Building and Maintaining the Gap Map

The lecture is more prescriptive about chart hygiene than any other in the series, because the whole approach collapses without it. The working routine is short: once a day, after the 18:00 reopen, draw the new NDOG as a zone with its midpoint, retire the oldest one from the working set, and check whether any remaining gap was traded cleanly through during the prior session — if so, demote it. Once a week, at the Sunday open, add the new NWOG and keep the previous few. Total time: a couple of minutes. Total benefit: a chart on which most reversals have a name.

Two refinements separate a working map from a cluttered one. First, overlaps are the highest-quality addresses: where an NDOG edge coincides with an NWOG midpoint, or where a gap CE lands on the prior day’s high, the level carries two reasons for the algorithm to reference it and reactions there are correspondingly sharper. Second, distance decays relevance: gaps far outside the range price is currently working are noise on the screen, not information. The map should show the ladder around the market, not every gap of the last month.

The lecture also draws a distinction worth keeping straight, because it is the most common source of confusion in the whole framework: the NDOG, the NWOG and the opening range gap are three different objects. The NDOG is the daily 17:00→18:00 void, the NWOG is the weekend void, and the ORG is the settlement-to-09:30 gap that only exists on a regular-hours chart. Traders who conflate them end up drawing one gap and calling it by three names — and then wondering why "the gap" works inconsistently.

Common Lecture 3 Mistakes

Using an RTH-only chart. The NDOG does not exist on a regular-hours chart. Half this lecture is invisible to traders who never changed their session settings, which is also why they experience the afternoon as arbitrary.

Marking only today’s gap. The value is in the rolling ladder. Recent NDOGs stay live for sessions and NWOGs for weeks; a chart with one gap on it is missing the map.

Treating a spent gap as live. A gap price has already traded cleanly through earlier in the session has done its work. Demote it before 13:30 rather than trading it at 14:30.

Skipping the confirmation because the level is "strong." Gap edges attract price; they do not guarantee reversals. Displacement and the 5-minute close are required at a gap exactly as they are anywhere else.

Frequently Asked Questions