AXIS Lesson 02
Building the map
The levels that earn a place, and the two traps that move them.
The levels anyone can draw
None of these need a paid tool. Every one of them is a place where a lot of traders made a decision, so price tends to react near them. Whether it reacts for or against you is what the if-thens in Lesson 04 are for.
| Level | Where it comes from | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Yesterday's high and low | The cash session's extremes | Where yesterday's auction stopped. Outside them is new territory |
| Yesterday's value area (VAH, VAL) and POC | The volume profile (AMT Lesson 05) | Where most of yesterday's business was done. Inside value, rotation; outside, a vote for change |
| Overnight high and low | 18:00 to 09:30 ET | The range overnight traders built. The open usually tests at least one side |
| Yesterday's close and the Globex open | 16:00 settlement area, 18:00 re-open | Reference points for whether overnight inventory is long or short (AMT Lesson 10) |
| Untested POCs and single prints | Earlier sessions' profiles (AMT Lesson 06) | Unfinished business: prices the market moved through fast and has not revisited |
| Weekly high and low | The week so far | The bigger auction's edges. Matter more late in the week |
Seven references from one day and one night. Drawn, they are a ladder. Ranked, two or three of them are today's plan. Illustration from simulated prices, not a real session.
Keep the few that matter
Draw them all, then cut. Most mornings a plan needs three to six levels. Rank each one on three questions:
- Is it close? A level the open can reach in the first hour matters today. One that needs a trend day to reach is a target, not a decision.
- Do references agree? When two levels sit within a few ticks of each other (an overnight high on top of yesterday's VAH, say), mark them as one zone. Agreement is worth more than either line alone.
- Is it fresh? A level price has not touched yet carries more information than one it has already chopped through three times.
Two traps that move your levels
These cost traders money every year, and neither one shows up as an error. The level just quietly sits in the wrong place.
1. A clock time needs a bar that starts at that time
"The 18:00 open" and "the 9:30 open" are prices at a clock time. On a time chart (1-minute, 5-minute) a bar starts exactly then, so the bar's open is the price. On a volume, range or tick chart, bars start whenever enough trades print. The first bar after 18:00 might have started at 17:59 or 18:04, and its open is not the 18:00 price. Take clock-time levels from a time-based chart, then draw them onto whatever chart you trade.
2. The roll changes the price of everything
Futures expire. NQ trades in quarterly contracts (March, June, September, December), and about a week before expiry the volume moves to the next one. The next contract can trade hundreds of points away from the old one. A level copied from last week's contract onto this week's chart is in a different price space: it looks plausible and it is simply wrong. In roll week, check which contract has the volume, and redraw anything you carried over.
A third, smaller one: measure distances in percent, not points. NQ has roughly doubled since 2021, so "a 50-point range" means something very different now than it did then. Lesson 05 uses this.
Key terms
Try it
Draw every level in the table above on tonight's chart. Then cross out all but five, and write next to each one why it stayed. Tomorrow, after the close, check which of the five price actually reacted at.
AXIS Desk · The Pre-Market Plan · free. Education only, not trade advice. Futures trading involves substantial risk of loss; past patterns do not guarantee future results.