Half-day bars, a midpoint gate, and a bar-based trail

A session cut at the midpoint

The archive workflow treats one trading day as something that can be built, not only observed. Cut the session at the midpoint of trading minutes and record a half-day bar with its own open, high, low, and close. Overlapping prices can then generate two signals in one day.

The first intraday correction was described as occurring by the half-day mark more than 80% of the time. That stretch was treated as quieter, and resting stops tended to accumulate there.

Session-clock checkpoints for the first correction

After a move away from the open, a first correction was treated as typical between 20 and 40 minutes. If that pullback did not break the open, the original direction was expected to resume with new extremes.

If no correction appeared by 60 minutes after the open, the procedure waited for a pullback, then entered with a stop two ticks beyond the extreme time bar and protected the fill two ticks on the opposite side of that same bar. Those minute offsets from the open are session-clock checkpoints for the first correction, the mid-session lull, and later extension.

A session that combined a wide range, heavy volume, a close above the open and mid-range, and a close above the prior day's high was followed by a higher next open in more than 70% of those cases.

How the half-day breakout is placed

The half-day construction records open, high, low, and close for each half-session and plots a three-day average midpoint as the daily direction filter. It buys two ticks above the prior half-day high or sells two ticks below the prior half-day low, and it places the protective stop two ticks beyond the opposite extreme of that prior bar.

An outside half-day bar, a half-session that breaks the prior half-session range, was treated as the preferred breakout trigger.

When the midpoint filter stands aside

The three-day average midpoint is a short-horizon direction line made by averaging the last three daily midpoints and connecting those values. Buys were taken only above that line and sells only below it.

The exceptions were a stretch into support or resistance, or an opposite outside half-day reversal printed inside the signal day's range.

Exits scaled from the three-day average range

The three-day average range is a recent typical daily span used to scale a profit-taking distance or a trailing-stop multiple. Same-session exits used a 50% multiple of that range. Short-hold exits either trailed two ticks beyond the prior half-day bar or used 57% of that same average range as a trailing stop.

When open profit exceeded 1,000 currency units per contract, the stop was moved two ticks beyond the latest half-day bar so a large short-horizon gain would not be allowed to reverse into a loss. That later stop is a bar-based trailing stop: a protective exit a fixed tick distance beyond the latest half-session extreme.

A 20-day average of daily highs paired with a 10-day average of daily lows was offered as a filter to skip the narrow sideways stretches where most losses were said to occur.