Previous Day High and Low in ICT Forex Trading

At 7:10 in Accra two traders circle the same EUR/USD wick. One calls it a raid of yesterday’s low. The other still has yesterday’s low three pips lower. The disagreement began the evening before, when their brokers closed the daily candle at different times.

Before planning a trade through a previous day high or low, establish which day your chart measures. Then decide what a visit would tell you. Yesterday’s price is easy to mark; deciding whether it remains a destination after London has already traded through it is the useful work.

Definition and chart context: previous day’s extremes

Use two date conventions on a copy of the same bid tape. A wick at 22:16 GMT reaches 1.09274. It belongs to Wednesday under a midnight GMT cutoff, but to Thursday under a 22:00 cutoff. A later rally to 1.09262 falls short of one version of the previous high. That discrepancy requires neither bad data nor an exotic liquidity theory. The samples contain different minutes.

For the ICT background, see Liquidity Pools. The worksheets below use stated study rules for measurement, confirmation and simulated fills. Those choices let you reproduce the examples; they are not claims that a public candle identifies the owner, size or intent of an institutional order.

Why this distinction matters

Yesterday’s extremes make a fair test of a liquidity idea because someone marking the chart before London can record the same prices as someone reviewing the day later. That is harder with a freely chosen swing. The discipline is to keep the old end points even when an incidentally nearby swing gives a more flattering description of the eventual turn. Treat the extreme as a destination while it is unvisited and as a historical reference after price passes it.

How to identify it before the next candle

Use completed daily candles from one feed. If your vendor prints a short Sunday candle, decide in advance whether to merge it into Monday, use a five-day session template, or keep it. Merging means taking the maximum high and minimum low of the combined observations, not averaging the two bars. Do not remove a full Monday merely because a calendar holiday made its range small.

Rebuild the day from intraday bars. Include the opening minute and exclude the minute stamped with the next opening time. Keep the vendor’s bar timestamp convention beside the prices. If the highest print is repeated, both minutes support the same high; choose the first timestamp for the first-touch clock. Save the low independently. A missing high does not justify estimating it from the close.

Which daily candle owns the overnight wick?

Suppose the broker’s completed Tuesday EUR/USD candle runs from 1.08276 to 1.08943. Its 66.7-pip span does not authorise a 66.7-pip target. At 6:50 GMT Wednesday, the bid has already printed 1.08951 overnight but has stayed above 1.08318. Label the upper boundary visited and the lower boundary untouched. London’s next push higher cannot be the first visit to Tuesday’s high. If a second feed shows a high of 1.08958, keep its visit count separate. A feed comparison has uncovered a difference in classification, not a reason to move the line on the original chart.

Count days on which neither extreme trades as well as days with a spectacular raid. If the research question concerns the first side taken, a day that takes both is one observation with an ordered path. Counting it twice overstates the amount of independent evidence. If both extremes fall inside one candle, go to the smaller timeframe or mark the order unknown.

How to trade the idea in a paper replay

Write which side was still intact when your trading window began. A first run through an untouched PDL followed by upward displacement and a retracement offers a different long hypothesis from buying a fourth visit after three accepted closes below PDL. For a continuation study, specify acceptance below the level before a retest. Never switch between reversal and continuation definitions simply because the first entry lost.

The two replays use constructed five-minute candles and a controlled order model shared across this workbook series. Keeping the execution pattern comparable lets you isolate what the featured concept changes: the reference, the eligibility decision, or the management rule. These selected paths illustrate mechanics. They are not historical signals or a sample from which to estimate a winning percentage.

A session clock you can reconstruct in Accra

Start by writing the clock in the margin. Accra uses GMT throughout the year. A session definition expressed in New York time moves by one hour on a Ghana clock when New York enters or leaves daylight saving time. A session expressed in London local time follows London instead. European and US changes need not occur on the same weekend. A saved template labelled London is not evidence of which clock its author used.

For a concrete conversion, take a New York clock reading of 02:00. In US standard time Accra reads 07:00; in US daylight time it reads 06:00. Thus a 02:00 to 05:00 New York London Kill Zone appears as 07:00 to 10:00 GMT in winter or 06:00 to 09:00 in summer. The 07:00 to 10:00 New York window becomes noon to 15:00 GMT in winter and 11:00 to 14:00 in summer. A school worksheet that deliberately uses fixed GMT hours is a different convention. Label it as such.

The same conversion places New York midnight at 05:00 GMT in winter or 04:00 GMT in summer. That is not the start of every broker day. A vendor using a New York close day can start a new trading day in the Ghana evening, hours before the New York midnight reference. One vertical line cannot quietly serve as both boundaries. If your session crosses midnight locally, write the full date on both ends rather than treating the interval as a negative number of hours.

Before replay, find one known UTC timestamp on the feed. Compare it with the platform clock and the intended market clock, then check another date in the opposite season. Record the opening timestamp of the first included bar and the first excluded bar. This makes a session marking portable: a trader opening the same feed in Kumasi and another using a different display timezone should select the same physical quotes. For the paired illustrations in this lesson, timestamps use a standard-time practice clock.

Check seasonal offsets against the Ghana clock record and the New York clock record for the year being tested. Keep historical observations on their original date.

A day that takes both ends

Suppose Tuesday’s high and low are frozen and Wednesday first trades below the low at 07:32. By 09:18 it has traded above Tuesday’s high too. There are at least three different research questions in that one session. Which external level did price reach first? Did a confirmed entry appear between the visits? If there was an entry, could it survive to its planned exit? A yes to the first question supplies no automatic answer to the others.

Build the evidence in order. Retrieve the two boundary prints, the local opposing swing that was known after the first raid, the close that qualified as displacement, and the first executable retracement. If the latter occurred only after the second boundary had traded, an entry aimed at that boundary was stale. If it occurred before the second boundary but price first broke the proposed stop, the direction of the eventual daily candle is irrelevant to the trade result.

A useful journal has a field for a delivered destination without a trade. This prevents pressure to manufacture a fill on days that illustrate the market narrative beautifully. It also makes it possible to discover a practical weakness: the boundary map might often identify the first destination correctly while your chosen retracement rarely materialises in time. That observation directs attention to entry design without throwing away the daily map.

Try the reverse exercise on a quiet day that takes neither side. The map still produced information: the setup requiring a raid never became eligible. If you erase quiet days, you can study what follows a raid, but you can no longer estimate how frequently the routine offers work during the hours you actually watch.

Worked replay A: The disputed daily low

Use a New York close day on this sheet. The last completed daily candle has its low at 1.08496. The overnight bid approaches that boundary but turns at 1.08507. The difference is 1.1 pips. On this feed the level is intact when the small chart opens; a developing daily bar on a different server cannot overturn that reading.

At 07:20 the local candle reaches 1.08475, beyond yesterday’s low. Its close returns to the original side. Write “first penetration on this feed” before looking for a trade. The prior day’s candle cannot reveal whether the 07:20 excursion will reverse. That second question belongs to the subsequent break of 1.08578.

Reconstruct the decision before reading the outcome

Cover the candles to the right of 07:20. On this EUR/USD bid chart the test candle opens at 1.08530, trades down to 1.08475 and ends at 1.08504. The close tells you that bids recovered part of the excursion. It does not yet tell you that anyone bought a particular number of lots, or that the prior short-term high will give way. Mark the low as an observation and leave the order field blank.

Now reveal the candle beginning 07:30. Its close at 1.08604 is above the earlier pivot at 1.08578. This is the completed break used by the exercise. Look two candles apart: the high of the bar beginning 07:25 is 1.08537 and the low of the bar beginning 07:35 is 1.08561. Their separation forms the bullish fair value gap in this model. One strong green candle alone would not establish those two outside prices.

A resting buy at their midpoint, 1.08549, can first be submitted at 07:40 under a next-bar convention. The 07:35 candle is named for its opening time, so its low cannot supply a fill for an order that depends on its close. This matters whenever the same screenshot appears to show both confirmation and a cheap entry. Write the order time before revealing the next low, not after finding a favourable one.

Assume a constant 0.7-pip spread throughout this small slice. On the return, bid reaches 1.08526 and the corresponding ask reaches 1.08533. The latter is at or below the requested buy price. We book 1.08549 as the fill, with no price improvement, no delay after activation and enough available size. Those are transparent simulation assumptions. A real candle, even from the correct side of the spread, is not a broker’s confirmation.

What the order would risk in cash

Give the practice account a USD balance of 1240. Its hypothetical cap of one half of one percent is $6.20 for this decision. For a USD-quoted pair with a 100,000-unit standard contract, one pip at one standard lot is $10. Adding 0.5 pip for assumed round-trip commission and other execution friction gives $92.00 of modelled downside at one lot. The spread is already present in the entry and exit quote rules and is not charged a second time.

Divide $6.20 by $92.00 and round down to the next permitted hundredth of a lot. That leaves 0.06 lots, risking about $5.52 under these assumptions. A gap or worse stop fill can exceed that number. Position sizing changes the money exposed; it cannot turn a missing confirmation into a valid entry. When the minimum tradable size exceeds the cap, the worksheet records a pass.

Change just one fact

Replace the overnight turning point with 1.08485 and keep every London candle identical. The current visit is no longer the first. A study restricted to fresh daily extremes must pass, even if a wider retest strategy would take exactly the same order. The change here is in the history of the daily reference, not in the shape of the entry.

Worked replay B: The disputed daily high

Use a New York close day on this sheet. The last completed daily candle has its high at 1.26370. The overnight bid approaches that boundary but turns at 1.26356. The difference is 1.4 pips. On this feed the level is intact when the small chart opens; a developing daily bar on a different server cannot overturn that reading.

At 07:25 the local candle reaches 1.26400, beyond yesterday’s high. Its close returns to the original side. Write “first penetration on this feed” before looking for a trade. The prior day’s candle cannot reveal whether the 07:25 excursion will reverse. That second question belongs to the subsequent break of 1.26267.

Audit the short from the exit side of the quote

Read the second tape independently. The 07:25 bid high is 1.26400. By the end of the bar starting 07:35, bid has closed at 1.26238, below the pre-existing pivot at 1.26267. The workbook calls that downward displacement. It does not require a guess about which institution initiated the move. The mark is useful because a different reviewer can identify the same closing price on the same feed.

The low of the 07:30 candle is 1.26322 and the high of the 07:40 candle is 1.26288. The later high remains below the earlier low, leaving a bearish execution gap between them. Halving this interval gives 1.26305. A sell limit resting there becomes eligible only after 07:40 has finished. When bid subsequently reaches 1.26334 the paper order can fill at its stated price. No favourable slippage is credited.

It is tempting to score this short from the lowest red wick, because that is what the bid chart displays. The position actually has to buy back. With an assumed spread of 0.8 pip, an ask target at 1.25993 requires a bid at or below 1.25985. An ask stop at 1.26411 needs only a bid at or above 1.26403. Marking these two conversions before scoring prevents a one-spread error on both exits.

Keep the original order record even when the outcome is obvious from the last candle. A reviewer needs the decision price, the reference quote and the activation time, not just a screenshot captioned “short”. If the platform would have rejected a resting order this close to market, or the feed lacks quotes in the return interval, the correct response is to change the fill status. It is not to claim a market execution at the old limit price.

Score the path, then challenge the assumption

The deciding candle opens at 08:00. Its bid range is 1.26329 to 1.26419. With the assumed spread, the ask range is 1.26337 to 1.26427. The upper stop is reached before the other exit without requiring a guess about two exits inside this bar. A later movement cannot reverse a booked exit. In particular, a later visit to the original target would not repair a prior stop.

Increase the estimated round-trip friction by another half pip as a sensitivity check, while leaving entry, stop and target fills fixed. Planned risk:reward becomes 1:2.51, obtained by dividing 29.9 pips of possible net reward by 11.9 pips of downside. This answers a cost question only. If widening the actual bid/ask spread changes whether an order is triggered, reconstruct the path instead of merely reducing the result by a fee.

Change just one fact

Replace the overnight turning point with 1.26383 and keep every London candle identical. The current visit is no longer the first. A study restricted to fresh daily extremes must pass, even if a wider retest strategy would take exactly the same order. The change here is in the history of the daily reference, not in the shape of the entry.

What can go wrong in the review?

A broker’s D1 divider can fall inside what you call the Asian session. Zooming out hides that fact. Inspect the final minute on either side of the boundary and record which bar owns a late wick. If the session’s first or last quotes are absent, mark the observation incomplete instead of borrowing a daily print from another vendor.

Reader exercise: Can this still be the first daily visit?

Try the following classification without using profit or loss as a clue. Measure the number of completed visits since the day closed. For this worksheet, the value must be at most 0 visits. Also require this separate fact: every minute from the daily cutoff to observation is present. These are conditions for admitting a row to a study. They do not replace the order trigger, size calculation or exit plan. The six records are constructed cases, not a report of observed market frequencies.

Cover the answer column and decide which facts you would request before admitting each record. A passes the numerical test at 0 visits and has the other required evidence. B has the other evidence but measures 1 visits. Under the stated rule that is enough to exclude B. A clean-looking reaction after B cannot change the comparison number of completed visits since the day closed ≤ 0. If you want to study a wider definition, write it as a new version and rerun every observation.

C is the deliberate boundary case. Its value of 0 visits equals the threshold. This worksheet uses an inclusive comparison, so C passes. A version that demands strictly less would exclude it. Keep exact prices or timestamps in the original record before rounding for display; values that look equal on a chart may still differ at the feed’s actual precision. The most efficient place to look for a disagreement between two reviewers is often an equality case like this.

D has a larger value than allowed, so it fails even though the separate prerequisite is unknown. E demonstrates the opposite error: the measured 0 visits is acceptable, but the prerequisite is known to be false. F lacks the numerical evidence and its remaining condition is satisfied. There is no basis to call it either a clean pass or a measured failure. Keeping “unresolved” distinct from “no” preserves what data collection could still settle.

An unexplained hole in the overnight feed can hide the very first visit, even when every visible price stays inside yesterday’s limits.

Recover the day that produced the number

Go back to the full session tape for the disputed observation. Load enough history to include the session that supplied the reference and the interval between that session and the proposed decision. A screenshot starting at entry can never establish an unvisited level on its own. If your vendor has no bars for part of the interval, preserve the gap in the record. Substituting another feed may be useful as a comparison, but it changes the provenance of the observation.

For this lesson the minimum useful packet is the day’s recorded extrema and the first matching intraday timestamp. Preserve the original precision and include the clock used. If another reader can reproduce the number but not the label, examine the equality rule and prerequisite. If they cannot reproduce the number, settle the input discrepancy first. These are different faults, and only the second can be repaired by retrieving better data.

Use the six rows to test the data process before drawing any market conclusion. Two rows pass, three have a known failure and one is unresolved. Of the five settled records, two pass; among all six the possible pass count is two or three depending on the missing measurement. Neither fraction measures how often a London trade wins. The labels reflect a deliberately chosen exercise, and no trade outcomes were supplied.

A test you can run on unseen sessions

How often does the first visit during your chosen session lead to a completed change of delivery before the opposite daily boundary is reached? Keep overnight visits and later revisits as separate groups.

Make one dated record for each session you inspect, including those in which the required condition never appears. Keep a count of eligible signals, orders placed, orders filled and positions closed. A result per fill answers a different question from a result per session. Separate them before comparing this rule with another way of reading previous day’s extremes.

Frequently asked questions

To put this worksheet beside a live chart, use the guides to London Kill Zone timing and the Judas Swing to define the session question. Then compare market structure shifts for confirmation, fair value gaps for the return price, and order blocks for the larger area behind the move.