Lectures 1 and 2 built the model around relative equal highs and lows — liquidity that forms during the session you are trading. Lecture 3 replaces that reference with something older and, in ICT's framing, considerably stronger: the New Day Opening Gap and the New Week Opening Gap.
The claim the lecture makes is unambiguous. NDOGs and NWOGs are stronger inefficiencies than relative equal highs and lows. They are not one option among several PD arrays. Within this lecture they become the primary draw on liquidity, and the intraday setups are built around price approaching them rather than around anything happening inside the session.
The second half of the lecture is the part almost everyone skips, and it is arguably more useful than the first: what to do when the morning is rangy. The answer is a specific afternoon window with a specific setup, and it is covered in full below.
Keep at least four NDOGs annotated, trade the AM session at 07:00, 08:00 and 09:00 when price approaches one of them, and if there is no market-driver news in the morning, expect a rangy day with false breakouts and take the OTE setup after the New York lunch hour between 01:30 and 02:30 PM.
NDOG and NWOG, defined exactly
| Gap | Definition as taught | Lifespan |
|---|---|---|
| NDOG New Day Opening Gap | The price range between the 05:00 PM settlement close and the 06:00 PM open, New York time. Mark it low to high as a range, not a line. | Five days, for this mentorship's purposes |
| NWOG New Week Opening Gap | The range between Friday 05:00 PM close and Monday 06:00 PM open, New York time. | Longer — carries across the week |
The hour between five and six is the CME maintenance break. No trading occurs, so no price is delivered, and the range between the last print of one session and the first print of the next is an inefficiency by definition — a band of prices at which nobody transacted.
That is the mechanical reason these levels behave differently from a fair value gap formed inside a session. A fair value gap is a region price moved through too quickly. A New Day Opening Gap is a region price never moved through at all.
Both the 05:00 PM close and the 06:00 PM open are prices, and the band between them is the gap. Traders who mark only the closing price lose the ability to see partial fills, which is exactly what Lecture 4 builds its quarter system on.
Why four NDOGs
The lecture's instruction is to keep at least four annotated at any time. Combined with the five-day lifespan, that gives you a rolling ladder of the most recent week's gaps sitting on the chart simultaneously.
The reason is that a single gap tells you very little. A stack of four tells you where the unfilled inefficiency is concentrated, and price is drawn toward concentration rather than toward any individual level. When three of the four sit within a narrow band below current price, that band is the day's magnet whether or not anything in today's session points at it.
This is the practical difference between the Lecture 3 model and the earlier two. Relative equal highs and lows are built today and consumed today. The NDOG ladder is standing structure that persists across sessions, so you arrive at 07:00 already knowing where price is likely being delivered.
The AM session model
The morning setup is the Lecture 1 and 2 skeleton with the NDOG substituted as the reference.
If you have one or more NDOGs below price and your bias is bullish, wait for price to reach those NDOGs at 07:00, 08:00 or 09:00. The gap is where price is being delivered to; the hour is when the delivery is expected to complete.
- Before the hour — the NDOG ladder is already marked. Identify which gap or cluster sits in the path of the 15-minute bias.
- At the hour — watch for price to approach the gap. Approach, not arrival: the reaction often begins at the near edge.
- The tag — price trades into the gap. On a bullish setup this is the low of the move.
- The shift — a body-close market structure shift out of the gap confirms the reaction.
- Entry — the array left by the displacement, exactly as in Lecture 1. Where an IFVG is present, Lecture 2's consequent encroachment entry applies.
- Stop — beyond the far side of the gap. If price closes through the whole gap, the level did not hold and the premise is gone.
- Target — the next NDOG in the opposite direction, or the session's relative equal highs.
The lecture is explicit: do not trade the gap immediately after price opens into it. Wait for price to give a clue. A tag with no structural response is price passing through, and gaps get passed through regularly. The clue is the shift.
The post-lunch OTE window — 01:30 to 02:30 PM
This is the half of Lecture 3 that gets left out of most summaries, and it answers the question every intraday trader actually has: what do I do when the morning was garbage?
The lecture's diagnosis comes first. If there is no market-driver news in the morning, expect a rangy day with false breakouts. That is not a description of bad luck. It is a prediction you can make before 09:30 by looking at the economic calendar. No medium or high-impact release in the New York AM session means the AM session is likely to chop, produce breakouts that fail, and stop out anyone trading the Lecture 1 model as though it were a normal day.
The instruction that follows: trade after the New York lunch hour instead, between 01:30 PM and 02:30 PM, where an OTE setup typically prints.
| Morning condition | What to expect | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Medium or high-impact news in the NY AM | Directional delivery, clean raids | Trade the AM model at 07:00 / 08:00 / 09:00 |
| No market-driver news | Rangy session, false breakouts | Stand down in the AM. Take the 01:30–02:30 OTE. |
| Bond auction or PM event | Afternoon carries the day's real move | The PM window is the primary session, not the backup |
The mechanics of the afternoon setup are conventional optimal trade entry. The New York lunch hour, roughly 12:00 to 13:00, typically produces a retracement of the morning's range. What the lecture identifies is that the reversal out of that retracement resolves in the hour after 01:30, and that the 62–79% band of the morning leg is where it turns.
- Mark the morning's leg — the impulsive move, whatever direction it went.
- Through lunch, price retraces into it.
- Between 01:30 and 02:30, look for the retracement to reach the OTE band and reverse.
- Entry at 70.5%, or at an array sitting inside the band. Stop beyond the swing that formed the leg.
- Target the morning extreme, or the nearest NDOG in the direction of the trade.
Use the OTE calculator to get the band rather than eyeballing it — the difference between 62% and 79% on an NQ morning range is frequently forty points, and which end you enter at decides the trade.
Most days do not have market-driver news in the New York morning. If you only run the AM model, you are trading the minority of sessions and forcing entries on the majority. The 01:30 window converts the rangy day from a loss into a second, cleaner opportunity — and it is why traders who run only Lectures 1 and 2 find the model declines far more often than it should.
Classifying the day before you trade it
The AM-or-PM decision is the most valuable thing in Lecture 3, so it is worth turning into an explicit routine rather than a rule of thumb. It takes two minutes and it happens before 07:00.
What counts as a market driver is narrower than the calendar's colour coding suggests. In practice: CPI, PPI, non-farm payrolls, jobless claims, retail sales, GDP releases, FOMC. A second-tier housing number at 10:00 is not going to produce the directional delivery the AM model needs.
The lecture also notes the inverse case. A quiet morning followed by an afternoon bond auction means the PM session carries the day's real move, and the 01:30 window stops being a consolation prize and becomes the primary session.
Using the ladder to set bias
There is a second use for the NDOG ladder that the lecture implies rather than states, and it is worth making explicit because it removes guesswork from the 15-minute bias step.
Ask where the unfilled concentration sits relative to current price. If the cluster is below, price has unfinished business below and the bias is bearish until it is dealt with. If above, bullish. When gaps sit on both sides at similar distance, the honest read is that there is no bias, and a day with no bias is a day the AM model should not be forced.
| Ladder position | Read | Action |
|---|---|---|
| Cluster below price | Bearish draw — unfilled inefficiency beneath | Look for the tag and the shift out of it |
| Cluster above price | Bullish draw | Same, inverted |
| Gaps both sides, similar distance | No clear draw | No bias. Wait, or take the PM window only. |
| All gaps filled | No standing structure | Fall back to the Lecture 1 relative equal highs and lows |
That last row matters. The NDOG ladder is not always populated with useful levels — after a strong trending week the recent gaps may all have been consumed. When that happens, Lecture 3 has nothing to add and you are back to running Lecture 1 as written.
Partial fills and what they mean
Because the NDOG is a range rather than a line, price can fill part of it and stop. That behaviour is the reason the lecture insists on marking low to high, and it is what Lecture 4 formalises with its quarter system.
Three outcomes are worth distinguishing when price reaches a gap:
- Rejection at the near edge. Price touches the boundary and turns. The strongest reaction, and the one that gives the tightest stop, but it also fills least often — a limit at the edge frequently never gets hit.
- Fill to the midpoint and reverse. The most common useful outcome. Price works into the middle of the range and turns from there.
- Full traverse. Price closes through the entire gap. The level did not hold, it has been consumed, and it comes off the ladder. If you are in a trade from that gap, this is the stop.
The distinction between the second and third outcomes is the whole trade. A gap being worked into is normal; a gap being closed through is invalidation, and the stop belongs beyond the far edge for exactly that reason.
NQ walkthrough — a gap-to-gap day
Illustrative sequence built to show the mechanics. Constructed prices, not a recorded trade.
Overnight prep — four NDOGs marked. Three cluster between 21,388 and 21,436 from the last three sessions. A fourth sits isolated at 21,690 from four days ago. Price opens the morning at 21,555, above the cluster.
06:50 — 15-minute bias. Price is in premium relative to the week's range, the concentration below is the obvious draw. Bias bearish, target the cluster.
07:00 to 07:30 — the pre-session move pushes to 21,578. No action.
08:14 — price begins delivering down toward the cluster.
09:07 — price tags 21,436, the upper edge of the top gap in the cluster. Nothing is done. The lecture says wait for the clue.
09:21 — price works through to 21,402, inside the middle gap, then closes back above 21,428 — a body-close shift out of the cluster. That is the clue.
09:24 — the displacement leaves a bullish BISI at 21,410–21,422 and a bullish breaker at 21,404–21,418. They overlap between 21,410 and 21,418. Limit at 21,414. Stop at 21,382, below the far side of the cluster. Risk 32 points.
10:48 — price delivers to 21,536, taking the morning's relative equal highs. 122 points, 3.8R. Half off, stop to break-even.
13:52 — the balance is still on. Price has retraced through lunch and is sitting in the 62–79% band of the morning leg. This is the 01:30 window and the same direction is being offered again. The remaining position holds; a second entry would be the afternoon OTE setup.
14:31 — 21,588 reached. Balance closed. 174 points, 5.4R on the remainder.
The NWOG in practice
The New Week Opening Gap gets defined alongside the NDOG and then largely ignored, which is a mistake — it behaves differently enough to be worth handling separately.
It forms across a longer break. Friday's 05:00 PM close to Monday's 06:00 PM open covers roughly forty-nine hours during which news accumulates and nobody can act on it. The resulting gap is typically wider than a nightly NDOG, and on weekends carrying a significant event it can be several times wider.
It also persists. Where an NDOG has a five-day working life in this mentorship's framing, an NWOG stays relevant across the week and frequently gets revisited on Wednesday or Thursday, long after the daily gaps around it have been consumed.
| NDOG | NWOG | |
|---|---|---|
| Break length | One hour | ~49 hours |
| Typical width | Narrow | Wider, sometimes much wider |
| Working life | Five days | The week, often longer |
| Best used as | Intraday draw within the ladder | Weekly reference and swing target |
The practical handling difference is what you do when price arrives. A narrow NDOG can be traded from its edge with a stop beyond the far side, because the far side is close. A wide NWOG cannot — a stop beyond the far edge of a fifty-point gap is a fifty-point stop, which frequently makes the trade unworkable at sensible size.
For wide gaps, the quarters system from Lecture 4 is the answer. Treat the 0.50 midpoint as the working level and place the stop beyond a quarter boundary rather than the whole range, accepting that you are trading a level inside the gap rather than the gap itself.
The other reason the NWOG matters is that it survives the ladder. On a Thursday when all four recent NDOGs have been filled and Lecture 3 appears to have nothing to offer, the week's opening gap is often still sitting there unfilled, and it is the standing reference the rest of the week has been working toward.
NDOG vs the other opening gaps
| Gap | Formed between | Chart type |
|---|---|---|
| NDOG | 05:00 PM close → 06:00 PM open, same day | Futures, ETH |
| NWOG | Friday 05:00 PM → Monday 06:00 PM | Futures, ETH |
| ORG | 4:15 PM settlement → 9:30 AM open | RTH charts only |
The distinction that trips people up is that the NDOG only exists on an electronic-trading-hours chart. If your NQ chart is set to regular trading hours, the five-to-six break is not displayed and you will never see the gap. Set the chart to ETH before concluding the levels are not there.
Common Lecture 3 mistakes
Marking one NDOG. The instruction is at least four. A single gap is a level; four is a map, and the map is what shows you the concentration.
Trading the tag. Price arriving at a gap is not the signal. The body-close shift out of it is. Gaps get passed straight through routinely.
Ignoring the news check. Two minutes on the economic calendar before 07:00 tells you whether you are trading the AM model or waiting for 01:30. Skipping it means running the AM model on a day it was never designed for.
Missing the 01:30 window entirely. The most common version of this failure is not knowing the window exists. It is the best second-chance entry in the series and it is in the second half of the lecture that most notes cut off.
Using an RTH chart. No maintenance break displayed, no NDOG visible.