Mountain Frog Research
Each session, the historical mornings that most resembled it at the same point on the clock — drawn as charts you can sort by eye, with what every one of them went on to do.
Matched only on what was knowable at the cutoff. The part of each chart before that moment is what the match was made on; the faded part after it is what you are being shown.
For subscribers until tomorrow.
What these sessions share is not how they looked at the open so much as the thoroughness of the give-back: each pushed up off the open, then surrendered that move and kept going, trading back through the opening area instead of holding above it.
The match pulled mornings that drove away from the open and were still holding near the extreme at the cutoff with a retrace far below the corpus figure for this time of day, so that shared shape is the selection, not a discovery.
The matcher picked sessions that set their high moments after the open, drove lower through the initial balance, and had recovered a meaningful chunk of that drive by late morning; the width of the balance is what the tool selects for, not a finding.
Session ATR 43.5, initial balance 0.82 ATR, RVOL 0.86, with 0.48 of the drive off the open handed back.
These are sessions that drove up off the open on lighter-than-typical participation, then spent the late morning giving part of the drive back, with the pullback into the cutoff close to the corpus norm.
The cohort is mornings that set the session high at or right after the open, drove lower from there, and by late morning had retraced a moderate portion of that drive — roughly in line with the corpus, but with a bounce that had not yet extended into a full reclaim.
The cohort is mornings whose opening drive ran out, reversed through the open, and then found a bid, so that by the cutoff price had climbed back inside the drive rather than staying below it.
These are sessions with a wide initial balance and an early high that was fully retraced by late morning; that shape is what the match selects on, not a finding.
The match pulled mornings that, like today, set an early high and then gave most or the whole of that push back before the cutoff — a far deeper round trip than a corpus-typical day — so that shape is what was selected for, not something these sessions teach.
What these sessions share is a morning that had reached its extreme by the cutoff without surrendering much of it: the pullback from the extreme is slight next to a typical session in the corpus, and the extreme itself is still close at hand.
What these sessions share is shape more than outcome: an early high, a late morning spent beneath it, and a downside probe once the cutoff had passed.
What these sessions share is not the wide opening range — the matcher selects for that — but how cleanly they held the morning advance: pullbacks stayed brief, price stayed pinned toward the upper part of the day, and each went on to print a fresh high after the cutoff without printing a fresh low.
What links these sessions is not their range — the match selects for that — but their posture into the cutoff: pushed up and away from the open, sitting near the highs, with much thinner pullbacks than the corpus shows by late morning.
What links these sessions is not the wide opening balance the matcher selects for, but the shape after it: a high set early, then a pullback into value that was already well advanced by the cutoff.
What ties these sessions together is not the size of the early range — the match selects for that — but where price stood at the cutoff: the morning drive was spent, its extreme well behind them, and a good part of that move already reversed.
What links these sessions is posture rather than force: these arrived at the cutoff still parked near the morning high, having given back far less of the up move than a typical session has by that hour.
What these sessions share is not the early range, which the matcher picks by construction, but how little of the morning advance they had surrendered by the cutoff: most were still pressed up against their highs, far tighter than a typical session at that stage.
What these sessions share is the shape of a morning that peaked early and then spent the balance of it unwinding — the give-back runs deeper here than in a typical session, and most of the cohort had erased the bulk of the morning move at its worst point.
What these mornings share is an early extreme and a long give-back: the high went in shortly after the bell, and the rest of the morning was spent unwinding it, leaving price deep inside the range at the cutoff — far deeper than a typical session in the corpus.
What binds this group is not how the morning opened but how much of it came back: each had already handed back the bulk of its early move by the cutoff and was trading in the middle of the range it built, further retraced than most sessions are by late morning.
What binds this group is a morning that settled nothing: a high close to where the day opened, then a slide that gave the move back, and each of them carried past where it began.
The matched sessions share a shape rather than a size: an early push, a high posted late in the morning, and a giveback deep enough to erase most of what the push built — much further retraced than a session is at this hour.
What these sessions share is not how far they travelled before the cutoff but that the travel stopped counting: each drove to a morning extreme and then gave the advance back, so by late morning the day was sitting where it started instead of where it had been.
These sessions share the same skeleton: the high arrived shortly after the open, the tape stayed mostly quiet through the morning, and price slid back into the body of the range instead of pressing the extreme.
These sessions share a shape rather than a size: the high arrived early, the session sold away from it, and by the cutoff price had ground most of the way back — a further-along repair than the corpus typically shows by this hour.
Session ATR 68.8, initial balance 0.25 ATR, RVOL 0.67, with 0.07 of the drive off the open handed back.
What these sessions share is shape rather than size: the high arrived early, and by the cutoff a good part of the morning excursion had been given back, leaving price under VWAP instead of pressing the extreme.
What ties these sessions together is a high printed early and never bettered, then a morning spent working away from it into a recovery that ran out of steam.
These are mornings that made their high early and then spent the rest of the session giving ground, with each bounce failing beneath the last — drifting rather than driving, and mostly quieter than the record's usual.
These sessions share a shape rather than a direction: a move away from the open that set its extreme before the cutoff, then a give-back that had already retraced most of it by the time the clock stopped — the shape the search is selecting for, not a discovery.
What links these sessions is not how far price travelled but how little of it came back: each worked away from the open and then held, sitting near the session extreme with only a token pullback at a point in the day when the broader corpus had typically given back much more.
What links these sessions is not how the opening looked but what came after it — each set its high early, surrendered the entire move, and arrived at the cutoff at or near the worst of the give-back, with price under VWAP.
These are sessions that topped early, gave the opening push back, and came to the cutoff sitting closer to the low of the day than the high, with whatever bounce they had already fading.
What binds this cohort is not the size of the morning move but how cleanly it was held — each of these sessions came into the cutoff pressing near its high, with pullbacks shallower than a typical session has shown by that hour.
What binds these sessions is not the size of the morning range — the match selects for that — but how little of it came back.