Market sessions

1. OVERVIEW

Market Sessions plots the four major global trading sessions (Tokyo, London, New York and Sydney) directly on an intraday chart. Each session is drawn from its open to its close and covers only that session’s own price range (its highest high and lowest low). You can see where each market opened, how far it travelled, and where sessions overlap.

It is free to use, works on any instrument and updates live while a session is running.

Highlights:

• Four sessions with custom labels, hours and colors (Sydney is off by default).
• Four display styles: Boxes, Zones, Timeline and Candles.
• Dotted, dashed or solid outlines.
• Optional Open to Close line and 50% level line for every session.
• Optional statistics in the label: percent change and pip change.
• Weekend filter and a lookback limit to keep the chart fast.
• Overlapping sessions stay readable: the opening edge of a later session is never hidden behind an earlier one.

2. QUICK START

1. Open an intraday chart (seconds, minutes or hours, for example 15m or 1h).
2. Add “Market Sessions” from the indicator list.
3. With the default settings you will see Tokyo (orange), London (green) and New York (blue) boxes. Each has its name above it and a dotted Open to Close line inside.
4. Open the indicator settings to change hours, colors, labels or the display style.

Note: sessions are only drawn on intraday timeframes. On daily or higher timeframes nothing is drawn.

3. DEFAULT SESSION HOURS (UTC)

• Tokyo: 00:00 to 09:00, on by default, orange.
• London: 07:00 to 16:00, on by default, green.
• New York: 13:00 to 22:00, on by default, blue.
• Sydney: 21:00 to 06:00 (next day), off by default, purple.

All times are UTC. Sessions that run past midnight (such as Sydney) are supported.

4. SETTINGS

4.1 Session settings (repeated for each of the four sessions)

• Enable: shows or hides the session.
• Label: the name shown above the box, for example “London”.
• Start (UTC, HH:MM): session open in 24-hour format, for example 07:00.
• End (UTC, HH:MM): session close in 24-hour format, for example 16:00. Use 00:00 for midnight.
• Color: base color of the session. The fill is drawn translucent, while the outline, label and lines use the solid color. Changing the opacity in the color picker changes the fill strength.

Time fields must be written exactly as HH:MM (two digits, a colon, two digits).

4.2 General settings

• Hide Weekends (default: on): skips Saturday and Sunday. Overnight sessions that open on Sunday evening, such as Sydney, are still shown. Turn it off to include the full 7-day week.
• Lookback (Days) (default: 150): only sessions from the last N days are kept on the chart. Older ones are removed automatically to keep performance high.
• Display Type (default: Boxes): Boxes, Zones, Timeline or Candles (see section 5).
• Session Labels (default: on): shows the session name above each box.
• Line Style (default: Dotted): Solid, Dashed or Dotted. Applies to box outlines, the Open to Close line and the 50% line.

4.3 Analytics settings

• Change (Pips) (default: off): adds the session move in pips (or points) to the label.
• Change (%) (default: off): adds the session move in percent to the label.
• Change Based On (default: Session High/Low): “Session High/Low” measures the full range of the session. “Session Open/Close” measures market direction (close minus open) and can be negative.
• Open -> Close Line (default: on): draws a line from the session’s opening price to its latest (or final) closing price.
• Session 50% Level (default: off): draws a line at the midpoint of the session’s high/low range.

When a statistic is enabled, the label looks like this:

• London (1.48%)
• London (58.8 pips)
• London (1.48% | 58.8 pips)

Pip calculation: for instruments quoted with 3 or 5 decimals (most forex pairs), one pip equals 10 ticks. For everything else the value is shown in single ticks (points).

5. DISPLAY TYPES

• Boxes: a dotted outline around each session’s own high/low range, plus a light fill. The box grows bar by bar while the session is running.
• Zones: tints the chart background for the full height of the pane while a session is active.
• Timeline: a thin colored strip under each session’s low, showing when the session was open.
• Candles: colors the candles that belong to an active session.

In Zones and Candles modes, if two sessions overlap, the later one in this order takes priority: Tokyo, London, New York, Sydney.

6. HOW OVERLAPS ARE HANDLED

Sessions overlap during part of the day. For example, Tokyo and London overlap from 07:00 to 09:00, and London and New York from 13:00 to 16:00.

In Boxes mode, each box is built from two parts:

• a dotted outline covering the full session range, and
• a separate light fill.

The fill of an earlier session stops growing when the next session opens. The later session’s fill starts once the earlier one has closed. As a result, no fill covers another session’s lines, so the opening edge of London and New York is always visible. The short overlap window shows outlines but no fill.

7. HOW IT WORKS (TECHNICAL NOTES)

• Written in Indie language v5 as a class-based indicator.
• One generic state machine processes all four sessions. Each session has its own schedule and running state (open, high, low and drawings).
• Session start: anchors the open, high and low, and creates the box, label and optional lines.
• During the session: extends the box to the current bar and tracks the extremes with max and min.
• Session end: finalizes the statistics label and the optional 50% and Open to Close lines.
• Session membership is checked with TakeProfit’s Schedule and ScheduleRule objects in the UTC time zone. This also handles overnight sessions and the weekend filter.
• Old sessions are erased as new ones start, based on the Lookback setting, so the number of drawings stays bounded.

8. TIPS

• Use 15m to 1h charts for the clearest view of full sessions.
• To follow only the London and New York overlap, disable Tokyo and Sydney.
• Switch “Change Based On” to Session Open/Close to see whether each session closed higher or lower than it opened.
• Adjust the session hours if you trade a market with different local hours, or to account for daylight-saving shifts. All inputs are in UTC.
• If the chart feels slow with very long histories, reduce Lookback (Days).

9. LIMITATIONS

• Intraday timeframes only.
• Times are entered in UTC. There is no automatic daylight-saving adjustment.
• The time inputs are text fields in HH:MM format (no clock picker).
• Times use 00:00 to 23:59. Enter midnight as 00:00, not 24:00.
• During overlap hours only outlines are shown (no fill), by design.
• Session statistics are calculated from the data available on your chart.

10. TROUBLESHOOTING

• Nothing is drawn: switch to an intraday timeframe (for example 15m or 1h).
• Error about session hours: check that Start and End are in HH:MM format, for example 07:00.
• A session is missing: make sure it is enabled and that Hide Weekends is not hiding the day you are looking at.
• Old sessions disappear: increase Lookback (Days).
• Labels overlap with price: turn off Session Labels or change the Display Type.

11. TEXT FOR THE TAKEPROFIT PUBLISHING FORM

Title:
Market Sessions

Short description:
Dynamic Tokyo, London, New York and Sydney session boxes with Open to Close lines, 50% levels and optional pip/percent statistics.

Description:
Market Sessions plots the Tokyo, London, New York and Sydney trading sessions on your intraday chart. Every session is drawn from its open to its close and covers only its own high/low range, so you can see where each market started and how far it moved. Customize hours (UTC), labels and colors. Choose between Boxes, Zones, Timeline and Candles display styles. Add an Open to Close line, a 50% equilibrium level and pip or percent change statistics. Hide weekends or limit the lookback for speed. Overlapping sessions remain fully readable.

Suggested tags:
sessions, market hours, Tokyo, London, New York, Sydney, forex, intraday, session range, boxes

12. VERSION HISTORY

Version 1.0: initial public release. Four sessions, four display types, Open to Close and 50% lines, pip and percent statistics, weekend filter, lookback limit, and overlap-safe box rendering.

13. DISCLAIMER

This indicator is provided free of charge for educational and informational purposes only. It is not financial advice, and past session behavior does not guarantee future results. Trading involves risk; use the indicator at your own discretion.

Author: Likith P