Mountain Frog Research

Sessions most like 2026-08-28, as of 11:30 ET

A wide, orderly morning that has held near its highs since an early top.

What would separate them: What separated the camps was whether progress above the morning high was kept or handed back, and whether the low of the earlier pullback stayed intact. Those are the levels to watch, along with whether participation picks up or thins as either is approached.

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. Today matches that posture but got there by a different route — its worst pullback of the morning was deeper than most of the group ever saw, and the recovery from that dip is what has price back near the highs. Daily range is narrower than the median analog and narrower than the corpus norm, and volume is a shade above the corpus norm while sitting toward the quiet end of this group. The same shape is being carried on a lighter, tighter tape than the sessions it was matched to.

Pressed and held 4 of 12

These kept working higher through the afternoon and gave little of it back. The close landed up near the session high rather than in the middle of the day's range.

new high 4 new low 0 median to close +0.48 ATR
Poked then faded 2 of 12

These pushed well beyond the morning high after the cutoff and then leaked the whole of it away. They finished close to where they had been sitting at the cutoff, so the push showed up in the range but not in the close.

new high 2 new low 0 median to close +0.16 ATR
Went nowhere 3 of 12

Neither side got traction after the cutoff. Pokes above the morning high made little headway and were given back, and the close sat near the cutoff price.

new high 3 new low 0 median to close +0.10 ATR
Rolled over 3 of 12

These lost the morning structure after the cutoff, traded back down through the cutoff level and closed under it. The weakest went on to take out the morning low and settle at the bottom of the day's range.

new high 2 new low 1 median to close -0.56 ATR

Written from the computed figures only, by a model that is not permitted to write a number — every count above is rendered from the same data as the table. Camps are one reading of these sessions, not a forecast: the matched features have been measured to add nothing over price position alone, so a cohort rate at this sample size is descriptive.

2026-08-28 — TODAY vwap +0.55· hi +0.82 @11:01 · IBgap -0.09· vwapΔ +0.17 · retr 10%/42%max in progress
All twelve, and today, on one set of axes hover a line to isolate it · use the plot column in the table below to drop a session — the scale refits to what is left, so hiding an outlier gives the rest the whole frame
Faint left of the cutoff: those sessions were selected for resembling today there, so the agreement is by construction. Everything that matters is to the right. Outcome is in the geometry as well as the colour — a new high is a line clearing its own earlier high — because red and green are the hardest pair to tell apart with colour-blindness.
What these became
11 of 12 expanded upward
after the cutoff, by which extremes they took
Room past the level
+0.45 ATR
median run from the cutoff price · +0.37 ATR beyond the morning high itself
Heat before it got there
-0.15 ATR
worst excursion against you between the cutoff and the extreme — not the whole session · worst -0.27 ATR · typically reached 15:10
What would catch it off guard
1 did something else
1 expanded downward · worst close -0.94 ATR

What kind of session these became — expansion one way, both ways, or balance — on the same four-way split the corpus study uses, where balance is a third of all sessions. Deliberately not a hit rate: which extreme gets taken largely restates where price already sat at the cutoff, and nobody holds to the close anyway. How far it ran, what it cost to sit through, and when it got there are the parts a trade is built on. n=12.

plot sessiondistATRIB /ATRRVOL retr nowretr max to closemax upmax down new highnew low
2026-08-28 — today0.0044.00.771.1010%42%in progress
2026-06-240.6569.80.511.196%41%-0.94+0.04-1.28YES
2023-06-021.0238.00.651.685%10%+0.10+0.32-0.20YES
2023-09-281.0234.50.701.291%15%+0.07+0.58-0.24YES
2025-08-061.0543.50.581.014%18%+0.17+0.35-0.18YES
2025-11-241.0573.00.581.217%11%+0.10+0.28-0.15YES
2023-01-061.0656.20.821.5822%30%+0.48+0.70-0.07YES
2026-07-241.0866.80.401.0912%18%-0.56+0.17-0.80YES
2023-12-011.1629.50.671.497%39%+0.53+0.75-0.21YES
2026-06-041.2255.50.520.853%16%+0.23+0.45-0.20YES
2026-03-241.2986.00.441.2913%19%-0.34+0.11-0.44YES
2024-04-051.3134.50.711.227%46%+0.16+0.78-0.25YES
2026-05-061.3256.80.521.0312%26%+0.30+0.46-0.27YES
cohort low29.50.400.851%10%-0.94+0.04-1.28
cohort median56.20.581.227%19%+0.16+0.45-0.21
cohort high86.00.821.6822%46%+0.53+0.78-0.07
cohort hit rate11/121/12
CORPUS median (n=967)50.50.511.0034%60%+0.05+0.30-0.28
CORPUS base rate56%50%

All ATR-normalised and measured from the 11:30 cutoff. max up / max down are forward excursions after the cutoff — not the session extremes, which in most of these were already set. new high / new low ask whether the post-cutoff move exceeded the pre-cutoff extreme. Click any row to expand that session's chart to full width and jump to it; click again to collapse.

2026-06-24 d=0.65 vwap +0.42· hi +0.71 @11:01 · IBgap -0.09· vwapΔ +0.20 · retr 6%/41%max closed -0.94 ATR
2023-06-02 d=1.02 vwap +0.46· hi +0.86 @11:28 · IBgap -0.06· vwapΔ +0.16 · retr 5%/10%max closed +0.10 ATR
2023-09-28 d=1.02 vwap +0.50· hi +0.83 @11:29 · IBgap -0.12· vwapΔ +0.29 · retr 1%/15%max closed +0.07 ATR
2025-08-06 d=1.05 vwap +0.53· hi +0.70 @11:28 · IBgap -0.20· vwapΔ +0.16 · retr 4%/18%max closed +0.17 ATR
2025-11-24 d=1.05 vwap +0.39· hi +0.79 @11:12 · IBgap +0.00· vwapΔ +0.20 · retr 7%/11%max closed +0.10 ATR
2023-01-06 d=1.06 vwap +0.41· hi +0.64 @11:07 · IBgap -0.00· vwapΔ +0.09 · retr 22%/30%max closed +0.48 ATR
2026-07-24 d=1.08 vwap +0.47· hi +0.70 @11:28 · IBgap -0.00· vwapΔ +0.10 · retr 12%/18%max closed -0.56 ATR
2023-12-01 d=1.16 vwap +0.41· hi +0.61 @11:29 · IBgap -0.13· vwapΔ +0.26 · retr 7%/39%max closed +0.53 ATR
2026-06-04 d=1.22 vwap +0.43· hi +0.71 @11:17 · IBgap +0.07· vwapΔ +0.25 · retr 3%/16%max closed +0.23 ATR
2026-03-24 d=1.29 vwap +0.34· hi +0.63 @11:25 · IBgap -0.03· vwapΔ +0.14 · retr 13%/19%max closed -0.34 ATR
2024-04-05 d=1.31 vwap +0.52· hi +1.09 @10:57 · IBgap -0.04· vwapΔ +0.43 · retr 7%/46%max closed +0.16 ATR
2026-05-06 d=1.32 vwap +0.29· hi +0.78 @11:06 · IBgap -0.01· vwapΔ +0.35 · retr 12%/26%max closed +0.30 ATR

How these were matched

Matched on seven measures, all ATR-normalised and z-scored: distance from VWAP, magnitude of the high off the open, the clock time of that high, expansion of the price-VWAP gap across IB creation, how far VWAP itself was dragged, and how much of the drive has been retraced — both currently and at its deepest. The IB-gap and VWAP terms separate a day that trended from one that chopped to the same place; the retracement terms separate a day still pinned near its high from one that has round-tripped to the open. Ordered nearest first. Solid = up to 11:30, the part matched on. Faded = the rest of the day, the part to read. Shaded band left of the 09:30 marker is premarket from 06:00 ET. The y-axis is a shared ATR ruler with the session open at 0, identical on every tile, so magnitudes are directly comparable.

n=12. This is a case-inspection tool for rare behaviour — sort the tiles into camps by eye. It is not an inference tool, and a percentage taken off this many charts would not mean anything.

Charts rendered with Lightweight Charts™, Copyright © 2026 TradingView, Inc. (Apache-2.0).