Lecture 5 takes the framework out of the New York morning entirely. The session is the Asian one, the window is 07:00 PM to 09:00 PM New York time, and the reference is the New Day Opening Gap that has just formed an hour earlier.
What makes this lecture different from the previous four is its purpose. The other models are built to find a trade. This one is built to establish the reference points the rest of the trading day will use — and then, optionally, to trade off them. ICT's phrasing is to build your draw on liquidity for the Asian session between 07:00 and 09:00 PM.
Getting that framing right changes how you use the lecture. If you run it purely as a setup hunt you will find few trades and conclude it does not work. Run it as the preparation step for the following morning and it becomes the most useful two hours in the series.
After the 06:00 PM open, wait for price to trade away from the NDOG and take the nearest liquidity on each side — those become your initial buy-side and sell-side levels — then identify the larger pools beyond them, and between 07:00 and 09:00 PM use those references to take an OTE setup when price closes through the NDOG.
Initial liquidity — the core idea
The concept Lecture 5 introduces is a two-tier liquidity map, and it is the most transferable idea in the whole series.
After the session opens at 06:00 PM, price trades away from the New Day Opening Gap in one direction and grabs the nearest pool it finds — forming a swing high, say. That swing high is now the initial buy-side liquidity. The same happens on the other side, producing the initial sell-side liquidity.
You now have a box. Above the initial buy-side and below the initial sell-side sit the larger pools — the previous day's high and low, the prior session extremes, standing relative equal highs and lows.
| Tier | What it is | Role |
|---|---|---|
| Initial buy-side | The nearest swing high formed as price moves away from the NDOG | The first target, and the first thing to get raided |
| Initial sell-side | The nearest swing low, same construction | Mirror |
| Larger pool above | Previous day high, prior session extreme, standing REHs | The real draw — where the day is ultimately going |
| Larger pool below | Previous day low, prior session extreme, standing RELs | Mirror |
The reason the two tiers matter is that they separate the raid from the destination. Initial liquidity gets taken during the Asian session or early London — that is the engineering. The larger pool is where price is actually being delivered, usually during the New York morning the next day.
A trader who marks only one tier confuses the two constantly: they see initial buy-side taken, read it as bullish continuation, and get caught when the move reverses toward the larger pool beneath.
Building the map, step by step
- 06:00 PM — the session opens. The NDOG has just formed between the 05:00 PM close and this open. Mark it as a range.
- Wait. The lecture is explicit: do not trade the gap immediately after the open. Let price give a clue.
- Price trades away from the NDOG in one direction and grabs the nearest liquidity, forming a swing. Mark it as initial buy-side or initial sell-side.
- Look for the other side. The opposing initial level either already exists or forms as price rotates back.
- Identify the larger pools above the initial buy-side and below the initial sell-side. Previous day high and low are the usual candidates.
- 07:00 PM to 09:00 PM — use these references. This is the execution window.
The trade — NDOG close and OTE
The setup the lecture specifies is narrow, which suits a thin session.
After 07:00 PM, if price goes below the NDOG and closes below it, look for a bearish setup using the optimal trade entry pattern. Invert for the bullish case.
- Trigger — a body close through the NDOG, not a wick through it. The gap has to be given up, not merely touched.
- Entry — OTE on the retracement of the leg that broke the gap. The 62–79% band, ideally at 70.5%.
- Stop — above the high formed after 07:00 PM for a short; below the low for a long.
- Target — the initial sell-side liquidity first, then the larger pool beyond it.
The two-tier target structure is the whole point of having built the map. The initial level is the realistic Asian-session objective — a thin market can reach it. The larger pool is usually a London or New York job, and holding for it overnight is a different trade with different risk.
Asian-session liquidity is thin, spreads are wider, and a stop that would be comfortable at 10:00 AM can be taken out by noise at 8:00 PM. Widen the stop for the conditions and size down accordingly rather than transplanting a New York stop distance into an overnight session — the position size calculator makes the adjustment explicit.
Why the Asian session behaves differently
Every rule in Lecture 5 that differs from the earlier lectures traces back to one fact: there is far less money in the market between 07:00 and 09:00 PM New York time than there is at 09:30 AM.
Three consequences follow, and they explain the lecture's caution.
- Ranges are smaller and stops are relatively wider. A move that would be a rounding error in the New York morning is a meaningful percentage of the Asian range. The absolute stop distance often has to be similar while the target is smaller, which compresses the achievable reward.
- Levels are respected more cleanly but reached less often. Thin books mean price is more likely to turn precisely at a marked level, and less likely to travel far enough to reach one.
- The session builds rather than resolves. This is the important one. Accumulation is the Asian session's job in the Power of Three framing, so a session spent constructing a range is the session working as intended, not failing to produce.
That last point is why the lecture is framed around building a map. Expecting the overnight session to deliver the day's move is asking it to do a job that belongs to London and New York.
The Sunday open
One case behaves differently enough to be worth separating. On Sunday evening the gap that forms is not a New Day Opening Gap but a New Week Opening Gap — the range between Friday's 05:00 PM close and Sunday's 06:00 PM open.
Two things change. The gap is usually wider, because two days of news accumulated while the market was shut. And it persists longer: where an NDOG has a five-day working life in this mentorship's framing, an NWOG stays relevant across the whole week and frequently gets revisited days later.
The model runs the same way, but the Sunday session is the thinnest of the week and the lecture's instruction to wait for a clue applies with more force than usual. In practice the Sunday open is better used for marking the level than for trading it, and the first genuine test of an NWOG usually arrives during Monday's London session.
The read-only checklist
Because the primary output of this lecture is preparation rather than execution, it is worth having a short routine you can run in ten minutes at 09:00 PM whether or not you intend to trade.
- Mark the NDOG — 05:00 PM close to 06:00 PM open, as a range, low to high.
- Mark initial buy-side — the nearest swing high formed as price moved away from the gap.
- Mark initial sell-side — the nearest swing low.
- Mark the larger pool above — previous day high, or the nearest standing relative equal highs.
- Mark the larger pool below — previous day low, or standing relative equal lows.
- Note which side is unfilled — if one larger pool has been visited recently and the other has not, the untouched one is the likelier draw.
- Check tomorrow's calendar — this decides whether the morning runs Lecture 4 or the Lecture 3 afternoon window.
Seven steps, no orders placed. When you sit down the following morning the draw-on-liquidity question is already answered and the calendar decision is already made, which means the only thing left to do at 06:50 is confirm the 15-minute bias still agrees with the map.
NQ walkthrough — an Asian session
Illustrative sequence built to show the mechanics. Constructed prices, not a recorded trade.
17:00 — session settles at 21,486.
18:00 — the new session opens at 21,462. The NDOG is 21,462–21,486, a 24-point range. Marked and left alone.
18:00 to 18:40 — no action. Waiting for a clue rather than trading the gap on the open.
18:52 — price works up to 21,514 and forms a swing high. That is the initial buy-side liquidity. Above it, the previous day's high sits at 21,602 — the larger pool.
19:26 — price rotates back down through the NDOG and forms a swing low at 21,430. Initial sell-side liquidity. Below it, the previous day's low at 21,338 is the larger pool on that side. The map is complete.
19:48 — price closes below 21,462, the lower edge of the NDOG, on a 5-minute body close. The gap has been given up. Bearish setup active.
20:05 — the leg that broke the gap runs from 21,498 down to 21,428, a 70-point leg. The OTE band is 21,471 to 21,483; 70.5% sits at 21,477. Limit placed there.
20:19 — filled at 21,477. Stop at 21,522, above the post-19:00 high with a buffer for overnight noise. Risk 45 points.
21:34 — price reaches 21,430, the initial sell-side. First target. 47 points, roughly 1R. Half off, stop to break-even. In a thin session this is often the whole trade.
03:12 next morning — London delivers the balance into 21,344, just above the previous day's low. 133 points, 2.9R on the remainder. The larger pool did the work the Asian session set up.
Which instruments the overnight session suits
The Asian session is not equally useful across markets, and running Lecture 5 on the wrong instrument is a reliable way to conclude it does not work.
| Instrument | Overnight behaviour | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| NQ / ES | Thin but orderly. The NDOG is clean and well respected. Ranges are small relative to the day. | Best fit. The model was built here. |
| USD/JPY, AUD/USD | Genuinely active — Tokyo is their home session, with real participation rather than residual flow. | Strong. Often better than the index futures. |
| EUR/USD, GBP/USD | Very thin. Small, directionless ranges until London approaches. | Map-building only. Rarely worth a trade. |
| Gold | Moves, but erratically and with wide spreads. Levels get overshot. | Marginal. Stops need real width. |
The pattern is straightforward: instruments whose home session is the Asian one behave normally during it, and everything else is running on residual flow. USD/JPY during Tokyo has genuine two-way participation. EUR/USD at 8:00 PM New York time does not, and marking careful levels on a chart with nobody trading it produces levels that mean very little.
The recommendation that follows is not to abandon the lecture on the majors, but to change what you use it for. On EUR/USD, run the checklist and build the map, then take the trade during the London session when the participation arrives to act on the levels you marked. The map is the transferable part; the trade is instrument-specific.
On the index futures, both halves work, which is why the lecture reads as it does — it was taught on charts where the overnight session is thin enough to build cleanly and liquid enough to trade.
Reading the Asian range the next morning
The map is only worth building if you know what to do with it at 03:00 and 08:30. The pattern the rest of the series expects is specific.
The Asian session produces a range. London opens and, in the great majority of cases, takes one side of it — sweeping either the initial buy-side or the initial sell-side you marked overnight. That sweep is the Judas swing, and its direction is the first genuine information of the day.
The read is counter-intuitive and it is the reason the two tiers exist:
- London sweeps your initial sell-side — that is sell-side liquidity being taken to fuel a move up. The likely destination is the larger pool above, not further down.
- London sweeps your initial buy-side — buy-side taken, likely destination is the larger pool below.
- London takes neither — the range is holding and the day is more likely to be one of the rangy sessions Lecture 3 describes.
By 08:00 you therefore arrive at the morning models with the draw-on-liquidity question answered by observation rather than by guesswork. The 15-minute bias step in Lecture 1 stops being an opinion and becomes a confirmation: does the higher timeframe agree with what London already told you?
Whichever side London raids, the day is usually being delivered toward the opposite larger pool. Mark both tiers at 09:00 PM, check which one gets taken by 05:00 AM, and the morning has a target before it starts.
This is also the answer to the reasonable objection that Lecture 5 produces few trades. Judged as a setup generator on a thin session it is unimpressive. Judged as the step that removes the largest discretionary decision from the next three lectures, it is the one that makes the rest of the series run.
The real value — preparation for the morning
Even when the Asian session produces no trade, the map you built during it is the thing you carry into the next session. That is the argument for running this lecture as preparation rather than as a hunt.
By 09:00 PM you know four levels: initial buy-side, initial sell-side, and the larger pool beyond each. When you sit down at 06:50 the following morning to run Lecture 1 or Lecture 2, the "draw on liquidity" step is already answered. You are not looking for a target, you already have two candidates and you know which tier each belongs to.
This also explains the series ordering. Lecture 5 comes last not because it is the most advanced but because it closes the loop — the overnight session builds the references that the morning models consume.
Mark both tiers every night, even on nights you have no intention of trading. Ten minutes at 09:00 PM removes the single most discretionary step from the following morning's model, and it is the reason the Asian range matters to traders who never place an order during it.
Common Lecture 5 mistakes
Trading the gap on the open. The lecture says wait for the clue. The 06:00 PM open is the thinnest, least reliable moment of the session.
Marking one tier. Initial liquidity without the larger pool behind it produces the classic error of reading an engineered raid as a directional move.
Accepting a wick through the NDOG. The trigger is a body close through the gap. A wick through and back is a test, and tests of the NDOG are routine.
Using New York stop distances. Overnight liquidity is thin. A stop sized for the 09:30 open gets taken by noise at 20:30.
Expecting the larger pool during the Asian session. It usually takes London or New York to get there. Target the initial level for the session trade and treat the larger pool as a hold into the next session, sized accordingly.