First-hour level
Also called: opening range, opening range high, opening range low
A first-hour level is a level taken from the first hour of a session on a market that does not trade around the clock. When a stock exchange opens, every order that waited overnight meets at once, and the first hour usually has the heaviest volume of the day. The high and the low of that hour are the levels.
How a first-hour level works
The hour starts at the opening bell and ends sixty minutes later. Until it ends nothing is drawn. At the end, the exact high and the exact low of the hour are drawn to the right and kept for the rest of that session. Price that comes back to them tends to stop; a close through them breaks them.
Example. A stock perpetual’s first hour prints a high of 100.80 and a low of 99.10. At 16:00 UTC price falls to 99.14 and turns: the first-hour low held. At 18:20 a 5-minute candle closes at 98.95: the low is broken for that session.
On a real market. The Nvidia perpetual on Binance, 21 October 2026: the first hour, 13:30 to 14:30 UTC, printed 222.41 and 218.01, and the rest of the session stayed between 222.27 and 218.88. On 29 October the first-hour low of 212.52 was tested at 212.59 and held. On 22 October the first-hour low of 215.42 broke on a close and price fell to 211.63.
Where the first hour is on a perpetual
A perpetual future on a stock trades 24/7 on Binance or Bybit, but the stock behind it trades only during its exchange’s session, and the contract follows the stock. The first hour is the first hour of the underlying market, in UTC: for New York, 13:30 to 14:30 in summer and 14:30 to 15:30 in winter. Weekends and the exchange’s public holidays have no session and no first hour. The candles the perpetual prints while the stock market is closed are ignored for this level.
First-hour level vs daily level
A daily level comes from the daily chart and can last for months. A first-hour level is read on a 5-minute chart and belongs to one session; the next morning a new first hour makes new ones. The two are used side by side: the daily levels say where the big players are, the first-hour levels say where today’s business was done.
First-hour levels in this course
The stop is sized the same way as for every level, 10% of the daily average true range. See level type 11, first-hour levels and, for the other level that closed markets create, gap levels.
Questions about first-hour level
What is the opening range?
The opening range is the span between the high and the low of the first minutes or the first hour of a session. In this course the range is the first hour, and its two edges are the first-hour levels.
When is the first hour of the New York session in UTC?
New York opens at 09:30 local time. That is 13:30 UTC while New York is on daylight time, from the second Sunday of March to the first Sunday of November, and 14:30 UTC for the rest of the year. The first hour ends at 14:30 or 15:30 UTC.
Does Bitcoin have a first-hour level?
No. Bitcoin trades 24 hours a day, seven days a week. There is no opening bell, so no hour where the overnight orders meet and no hour whose range stands out. The level exists on instruments with a closed market behind them.