Opening Gap

What is an Opening Gap?

An opening gap is the span between one session's close and the next session's open — untraded not because price moved too fast, but because the market was shut. That makes it a calendar-made imbalance, unlike a fair value gap, which needs a fast three-candle sequence to form. ICT's taxonomy names the recurring ones: the new day opening gap between a futures session's close and its reopen, the new week opening gap between Friday's close and the weekly reopen, and the opening range gap between the prior regular-session close and the next 9:30 AM ET open on U.S. index products.

The SMC/ICT reading treats each gap as unfinished business: a range holding no agreed prices, which the market often revisits — fully, partway to the midpoint (consequent encroachment, in ICT vocabulary), or not at all. Recent gaps, weekly ones especially, stay marked on the chart and are watched as reference levels long after the open that created them.

How traders use it

• As pre-marked session levels: the gap's high, low, and midpoint are mapped before the open, and the first reactions at those levels (rejection at an edge, hesitation at the midpoint) frame early trades.
• As fill scenarios rather than predictions: some gaps fill immediately, some reach the midpoint and continue, some stay open for weeks. The useful posture is a branch plan for each outcome, not an assumption that the fill is owed.
• As longer-term reference zones, several recent weekly gaps are commonly kept on the chart, and price returning into an old one is watched for support or resistance behavior: a tendency to plan around, not a rule.