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Execution · Lesson 5

Reading the premarket on NQ

Before 9:30 you will know what NQ did overnight and where the day's decisions sit, in about five minutes, in the same order every morning.

intermediate9 min read · +45 XP

See it on a real chart

The same idea, live on the CIY Chart during the daily NQ prep. Each clip was recorded on the date shown, and the levels in it were for that session only.

Three bars told you what the Asia session did

Recorded live · Wednesday, September 16, 2026

Yesterday's candle was extremely bullish and NQ opened above it

Recorded live · Friday, September 18, 2026

The levels NQ cleared overnight

Recorded live · Tuesday, August 25, 2026

The short version

  • NQ trades almost around the clock. Its session opens at 6 p.m. ET, so by 9:30 the day's story is already under way.
  • Read it in order: yesterday's candle, the one-hour trend, then the overnight from the 6 p.m. open.
  • Mark the levels before the bell and plan both branches: what happens if one holds and what happens if it breaks.
  • Check the news calendar. An 8:30 release can rewrite the whole overnight in a single bar.

Do this before the next open

Tomorrow before 9:30, write four lines on NQ: yesterday's candle, the one-hour trend, what the session did from the 6 p.m. open, and the one level where your plan changes. After the close, check it against that day's grades at ciycapital.com/premarket.

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Go deeperRead the full lesson

Stocks mostly trade from 9:30 to 4:00 Eastern. NQ, the Nasdaq-100 futures contract, trades from 6 p.m. Eastern to 5 p.m. the next day, five days a week, with a one-hour break each afternoon. So when the regular session opens at 9:30, NQ has usually been trading for more than fifteen hours. The open does not start the day. It inherits it.

The order, every morning

  • Yesterday's candle. What did the daily candle close as? A doji (open and close nearly equal) is indecision. A hammer (a long lower wick) means sellers pushed down and buyers took it back.
  • The one-hour trend. Drop to the one-hour chart and say it out loud: up, down, or sideways. One word, before you look at anything smaller.
  • The overnight, from the 6 p.m. open. Drop to a short timeframe (Ron uses a six-minute chart) and walk forward from the first bar of the session. Where did it run, where did it pull back, where did it stall?
  • The levels. Turn on the levels already on the chart: prior highs and lows, and the wicks where price turned before. Note which ones the overnight tested.
  • The reference lines. Where is price against the VWAP and against the trend line? Above both, below both, or caught between them?
  • The calendar. Which releases are due, and when? 8:30 is the usual time for the big ones, and the plan should know about them before they print.

What the overnight can and cannot tell you

Fewer contracts trade overnight than during the regular session, so an overnight high or low is a reference, not a verdict. The open can and often does reverse what the overnight did. Treat the overnight as the map of where the fight will be, not as the result of the fight.

This exact routine is published free every trading morning at ciycapital.com/premarket, with the levels drawn before the open and each one graded against the session after the close, misses included. Read yours first, then compare.

Education only. Nothing in this lesson is a signal or a recommendation to trade. Trading involves substantial risk of loss.