summary: if what's in play shows the high formed first but your chart (or a report) shows the low first, the two views are almost always reading different session windows. here's how "formed first" is computed and how to line them up.

this one comes up a lot, so let me walk through it.

you open what's in play (WIP) and it shows the high of the initial balance formed first, with a short bias. but on your own chart, the IB low clearly printed first. they look like they're contradicting each other.

they're not. WIP and the report are both correct, they're just measuring different windows. let me show you why.

a big part of the IB read comes down to one question: which side of the range formed first, the high or the low?

that answer isn't pulled from the whole day. it's pulled from the initial balance window — and that window is defined by the session start time you've got selected.

the IB is the range that builds over the opening period of your chosen session. edgeful looks inside that window, checks whether the high or the low printed earlier in time, and that's what shows up as "formed first."

so the session start time isn't a cosmetic setting. it sets the exact window edgeful is looking at — and which extreme came first depends entirely on where that window starts and ends.

change the session, and you change the window. change the window, and the side that "formed first" can flip.

here's the part that trips people up.

WIP has its own default session time. each report section also has its own selected session time. these two settings live in different places, and they don't automatically match.

if WIP is set to one session start (say, 7pm) and the report section you're looking at is set to a different one (say, 8pm), the IB window is different in each view. different window, different opening range — and the high and low can end up in a different order.

that's exactly what happened here. WIP was reading one IB window and showing the high first. the report — and your chart, which matched the report's session — was reading a window that started an hour apart, where the low came first.

neither number is wrong. they're answering the same question over two different windows.

this is the same root cause behind a couple of other mismatches we've written up — the numbers are right, the settings just aren't aligned. see why doesn't my number match the report? if you're comparing WIP against a report more generally.

getting the two views to agree is quick. you're just making sure both are reading the same session window.

once the start times match, the IB window matches — and "formed first" will read the same in both places.

one more thing worth knowing: session start times are tied to the 6pm ET futures rollover, so a session that starts around the evening open can land on either side of a day boundary depending on the exact time you pick. that's another reason a one-hour difference in the setting can move which extreme printed first. why your edgeful data doesn't match TradingView: the 6pm session rollover explained goes deeper on how the rollover works.

bottom line: if WIP and a report disagree on which side formed first, check the session start time in both. it's almost always a settings mismatch, not a data problem.