Overnight & ETH Levels

What are Overnight & ETH Levels?

Overnight and ETH levels are reference prices formed outside the regular session: the overnight high and low (ONH/ONL) built during a futures contract's extended electronic hours, and the pre-market high and low in stocks. Splitting the day into regular and extended sessions is its own charting decision (RTH vs ETH); these levels are what the extended session leaves behind. Because overnight trade runs on thinner volume and narrower participation, its extremes are prices set without the full crowd, and the regular-session open routinely revisits and re-judges them.

That makes ONH, ONL, and the pre-market extremes the first working map of a trading day: the open either rotates inside the overnight range or breaks an overnight extreme, and what happens at those levels shows whether the early move is being accepted or faded. Stops also collect just beyond the overnight extremes, which is why sweeps of the ONH or ONL are a recurring intraday event.

How traders use it

• To frame the open: where the regular session opens relative to the overnight range (inside it, above the ONH, below the ONL) sets the day's first bias, and interaction with the opening range shows whether that bias holds.
• For breakout-or-fade decisions: a push through the ONH that holds is treated as range extension, while a poke through it that immediately returns inside is a classic fade back toward the other side of the overnight range.
• As a liquidity map: resting stops beyond overnight extremes make the ONH and ONL common sweep targets, so session liquidity frameworks watch them for stop-runs before the day's more durable move.