summary: the ICT opening retracement report tracks how often price retraces back to the midnight open (the open of the 12:00 AM ET candle) during the NY or London trading session. the report has 5 variants — standard, by weekday, by size, by fill time, and by spike — and the data varies meaningfully by ticker, weekday, and opening displacement size. this article covers what each variant measures, how the size buckets work, how to find your specific day in the data, and how to pair it with the gap fill report for confluence.

the report is built around the midnight open — the open price of the 12:00 AM ET candle. that level becomes the reference for the day. the report then tracks whether price retraces back to it during your selected session.

there are 2 setups, defined by where the session opens relative to the midnight open:

whether it's an "opened above" or "opened below" day is determined by the session open price — 9:30 AM ET for NY, 3:00 AM ET for London — relative to the midnight open. pre-market action and overnight noise don't determine the setup.

retracements only count inside the session window. if price hits the midnight open at 7:00 AM ET on an NY-session report, that doesn't count — the retracement has to happen between 9:30 AM and 4:00 PM ET. same idea for London (between 3:00 AM and 8:00 AM ET). this is what makes the data reliable; you're not catching random overnight wicks.

the report supports 2 sessions:

switching sessions changes both the open price used to determine the setup and the window in which retracements count. a day that's "opened above" on the NY session might be "opened below" on the London session — different opening prices, different setups, different stats. don't compare numbers across sessions; treat them as separate analyses.

the headline number. tracks how often price retraces to the midnight open during your selected session, broken into the 2 setups (opened above, opened below). start here for the baseline probabilities on your ticker.

same calculation as standard, but broken out by day of the week. this often reveals the real edge — different weekdays behave very differently.

examples we've seen in the data:

always look at by-weekday before making a trading decision. the standard number averages everything together; by-weekday is where you find the actually-tradeable slices.

filters the analysis by the size of the move from the midnight open to the session open — i.e., how far price displaced overnight before the session started. each bucket represents a range of that displacement, and the report shows the retracement probability for each bucket.

this is what trips people up. the size buckets are NOT measuring the size of the retracement. they're measuring the size of the opening displacement (midnight open → session open). work out how far today's session opened from the midnight open, find the bucket that contains it, and that row tells you how often days with that displacement size retraced.

the by-size variant matters most on instruments where the standard probability is borderline — close to a coin flip overall. the by-size data often reveals that some displacement sizes retrace consistently even when the overall average says there is no edge.

narrows to only the days where price actually touched the midnight open (i.e., the retracement happened), then breaks those days down by whether the fill happened before or after a selected time. useful for understanding when retracements typically occur within the session — early, mid-session, or near the close — so you know how long to give a trade.

also narrows to only the days that retraced, then measures how far price first spiked away from the midnight open before reversing back to it. on "opened above" days that's the high above the session open before price dropped to retrace; on "opened below" days it's the low before price rallied back. the report shows the average spike and the max spike for each.

use it to size stops and time entries: a move against your retracement trade that's still within the average spike is normal — don't get shaken out. once price runs well past the average spike, the retracement becomes less likely, so it's a signal to tighten up or step aside. you can also wait for price to spike toward the average distance before entering, getting you closer to where price has historically reversed.

the buckets are fixed across instruments and run from very small to extreme displacement. each one represents a range of opening displacement (midnight open → session open), and within each bucket the report shows the retracement rate for both opened-above and opened-below days.

each bucket aggregates all historical days with opening displacement in that range — it's a cohort, not a single day.

calculate the % move from the midnight open (12:00 AM ET candle open) to the session open price. find the bucket that contains that number, and read that row.

a common mistake: reading the row that matches your retracement size and assuming it represents your day. it only does if your day's opening displacement falls in that row. otherwise that row is showing stats for a different cohort.

a few settings change what the report measures:

the standard probability is not the same across instruments, and it is not the same in both directions on the same instrument. some tickers lean reliably one way, some sit close to a coin flip at the standard view, and some have a usable edge on one side only.

so don't inherit a number from another ticker. open the standard report for the instrument you actually trade and read both directions separately — opened-above and opened-below can be very different reads. if the standard number is borderline, that's your cue to drop into by-weekday and by-size rather than to skip the report: the edge often lives in a sub-cohort even when the overall average says there isn't one.

that triangulation — ticker, then weekday, then displacement size — is the whole reason the variants exist.

the rule of thumb: take the setup when the probability clears a comfortable majority — a solid lean, not a near-even split, and the further clear of it the better. if the standard number is borderline, drop into by-weekday and by-size to find the higher-probability sub-cohort.

always pull the latest numbers from the report itself for your own ticker and session. any figure quoted elsewhere — in a video, a post, or a conversation — was a snapshot of a moment, not a trade signal.

the ICT opening retracement and the gap fill report often target the same level — and when they do, you've got two independent statistical edges pointing at the same price.

how it works:

on most days these are different levels. but when they line up — when yesterday's close and the midnight open are at the same price — both reports point at that level, and the probability that price visits it is structurally higher than either signal alone.

a third level worth checking: the previous day's high or low (outside days report). when 3 reports — gap fill, ICT, and outside days — all agree on a level, you have very strong confluence.

these are 2 separate things and people sometimes mix them up:

use them together: the report tells you whether the setup has an edge today; the indicator shows you the level on your chart so you can manage entries and exits around it. for indicator setup and access troubleshooting, see TradingView indicators: access, updates, and troubleshooting.