What is Sessions?
Sessions shades the background behind the candles for three time windows each day: pre-market, regular hours and post-market. The defaults follow US stock market hours, so you can see how a crypto market behaved while US equities were open, before they opened and after they closed.
It calculates nothing and draws no line. The shading is the whole output, and it says nothing about direction, volume or how a session will trade.
How to use Sessions
- Blue shading. Pre-market, 09:00 to 14:30 UTC by default.
- Grey shading. Regular hours, 14:30 to 21:00 UTC by default.
- Orange shading. Post-market, 21:00 to 01:00 UTC by default, running over midnight.
- Comparing sessions. Looking at where the larger candles, breakouts and reversals cluster shows which hours a market tends to be active in.
The shading marks time only. It is context, not a signal.
Settings
| Setting | Default | What it changes |
|---|---|---|
| Pre-market | On | Shades the pre-market window. Turn it off to hide that window. |
| Regular Hours | On | Shades the regular hours window. Turn it off to hide that window. |
| Post-market | On | Shades the post-market window. Turn it off to hide that window. |
| Pre-market Session | 0900-1430 | The pre-market window as start and end times in UTC, written HHMM-HHMM. The end time is not included. |
| Regular Session | 1430-2100 | The regular hours window in UTC, written HHMM-HHMM. |
| Post-market Session | 2100-0100 | The post-market window in UTC. An end time at or before the start time runs over midnight, as this default does. |
At present the session times cannot be edited from the settings dialog, so the shading uses the defaults above.
Calculation
For each bar, the indicator takes the bar's opening time in UTC as minutes past midnight and checks it against each enabled window:
start < end: in session if start <= time < end
end <= start: in session if time >= start or time < end
shade the bar with the colour of the window it falls inThe end time is exclusive, so a bar that opens exactly at 14:30 UTC belongs to regular hours, not pre-market. A window whose start and end are the same, or whose times are not valid HHMM values, shades nothing.
If windows overlap, the later one wins: post-market over regular hours over pre-market. The defaults do not overlap.
The defaults are US equity hours during Eastern Standard Time, 04:00 to 09:30, 09:30 to 16:00 and 16:00 to 20:00 New York time. The times are fixed in UTC and do not follow daylight saving, so from March to November the shading is an hour later than the actual US sessions.
Limitations
- No daylight saving. The windows are fixed in UTC, so for much of the year they are an hour off the US sessions they represent.
- Times cannot currently be edited. The session windows are fixed at their defaults in the settings dialog for now; only the on/off switches can be changed.
- Bars are shaded by their opening time. On higher timeframes a bar that opens outside a session but spans part of it is not shaded, and on 1D and above the shading says little.
- Weekends and holidays are shaded too. The windows repeat every day, including days the US stock market is closed.
- It is not a signal. Knowing the session does not tell you what price will do in it.
Frequently asked questions
It shades the chart background during three daily time windows, pre-market, regular hours and post-market. The defaults correspond to US stock market hours in Eastern Standard Time, expressed in UTC.
The session times are fixed in UTC and do not move with daylight saving. The defaults match US market hours in Eastern Standard Time, so between March and November, when New York is on daylight time, the shading starts and ends an hour later than the actual US sessions.
The indicator declares six inputs: Pre-market, Regular Hours and Post-market switches, all on by default, and Pre-market Session (default 0900-1430), Regular Session (default 1430-2100) and Post-market Session (default 2100-0100), all in UTC. The switches can be changed in the indicator's settings. The session times cannot currently be edited from the settings dialog, so the shading uses the defaults.
No. The shading depends only on each bar's opening time, so it is decided as soon as a bar opens and never changes afterwards.
Crypto trades around the clock, but activity often changes when traditional markets open and close. The shading makes it easy to compare price action inside and outside US stock market hours.
Use the Add to chart button at the top of this page. It opens BTC/USDT on Binance in the Altrady Charts terminal with the built-in Sessions already applied. On any other market, open the indicator picker on the chart and choose Sessions from the Levels group.