Trading Sessions Indicator: Asia, London, NY

What it shows

For each session on each day: a tinted box from the first candle to the last, running from the session’s highest high to its lowest low. Dashed lines mark the first candle’s open and the last candle’s close with a tint between them, a dotted line marks the average price, and a label at the lower left gives the range in ticks, the average and the session name.

How Pravex works it out

1. It only works on intraday candles. On a daily chart or longer it draws nothing.
2. For each session that is switched on, every candle’s time is turned into the session’s own clock using its time zone. The app has a built-in list of 95 named zones, with daylight saving rules for the US, Europe, Australia and New Zealand, and also accepts offsets such as GMT-5 or UTC+0530. An empty zone means UTC, and a name the app does not know also falls back to UTC.
3. A candle belongs to the session if its open time is at or after the session start and before the end. If the end is earlier than the start the session runs overnight and belongs to the day it started. If start and end are the same, it covers the whole day.
4. The candles of one session on one day form one instance. A session window with no candles in it that day is not drawn. Gold has no candles in its daily break or over the weekend, so a window that falls there draws nothing, and a window that only partly overlaps a break covers just the candles that exist.
5. For each instance the box runs from the first candle to the last, between the highest high and the lowest low. The dashed lines sit at the first candle’s open and the last candle’s close, and the dotted line at the plain average of the candles’ closing prices. The range label counts the distance from low to high in ticks, the smallest price step shown on the chart.

Settings

Setting	Default	What changing it does
Name in the label	on	Adds the session’s name as the last line of its label.
Open and close lines	on	Draws the two dashed lines at the session’s opening and closing prices and the tint between them.
Range in the label	on	Adds a "Range" line to the label with the high-to-low distance in ticks.
Average price line	on	Draws the dotted average line and adds an "Avg" line to the label.
First window on	on	Turns the first session on or off.
First window name	Asia	The name in the label. It is text only and does not change the hours.
First window hours	09:00 to 15:30	Start and end of the window, in 15-minute steps, on the clock of the time zone below. The default runs 09:00 to 15:30.
First window clock	Asia/Shanghai	The time zone the hours are read in. Shanghai has no daylight saving, so this window stays at the same UTC hours all year.
Second window on	on	Turns the second session on or off.
Second window name	London	The name in the label of the second session.
Second window hours	08:00 to 17:00	Start and end of the window, read in the time zone below.
Second window clock	Europe/London	The time zone for the second session. It follows European daylight saving, so the window shifts against UTC twice a year.
Third window on	on	Turns the third session on or off.
Third window name	New York	The name in the label of the third session.
Third window hours	08:00 to 17:00	Start and end of the window, read in the time zone below.
Third window clock	America/New_York	The time zone for the third session. It follows US daylight saving, which starts and ends on different weeks from Europe’s.

How traders read it

Traders use session boxes to see which part of the day set the high or low, how wide each session ran, and where each one finished relative to where it started. Comparing today’s ranges with the last few days shows whether a session is unusually busy or quiet.

The average line helps as a reference: a session that closes well above its own average finished strong, one that closes below it faded. The lines at open and close show the session’s net move without opening the candles.

When it misleads

The default windows are fixed clock hours and not rules of the market. Gold trades through all of them, and the London and New York windows overlap for part of each day. Daylight saving moves windows against each other for a few weeks every spring and autumn. A candle is placed by its open time, so on 4-hour candles a session edge inside a candle follows that candle’s open. A time zone typed wrongly falls back to UTC with no warning, so check the box lands where you expect. On gold the break and weekend leave days with short or missing boxes.

Questions and answers

What are the default session times?

Asia 09:00 to 15:30 in Shanghai time, London 08:00 to 17:00 in London time and New York 08:00 to 17:00 in New York time. Each name, start, end and zone can be changed.

Does Trading Sessions work on the daily chart?

No. It draws nothing on a daily or longer candle because a session is shorter than one candle there. Use a timeframe below one day.

How does it handle daylight saving?

The app has the US, European, Australian and New Zealand rules built in for the zones it knows, so a window follows its own local clock when the clocks change.

Why is a session box missing on some days?

There were no candles inside its window that day. On gold that happens at the weekend and when the window falls inside the daily break.

What does the Range number mean?

The session’s highest high minus its lowest low, divided by the smallest price step on the chart, so it counts ticks rather than price.

Related: Seasonality, Moon Phases, Relative Volume at Time, Volume Weighted Average Price, every indicator.