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What is Session Imbalance?
The Initial Balance is one of the rare session structures that has held for decades: the first hour of the regular session concentrates a large share of the volume, and the boundaries it leaves become reference points the market revisits. Session Imbalance plots those boundaries automatically, the high and low of the initial period, their midpoint, then extensions at fifty and one hundred percent above and below. You get seven lines that structure the rest of the day without measuring anything by hand.
What DeepCharts does better
The value is in the configuration, because a badly set Initial Balance is worse than none. Duration is configurable, sixty minutes by default, fifteen for those working a tight open. The start time is set explicitly, nine thirty for US futures, nine for European ones, with a custom session option for special cases. The extension mode decides what happens to the lines after the period: nothing, extended until price first touches them, or extended to the close. A further option plots the levels only once the period has ended, which spares you watching lines that are still moving.
Using it day to day
The decisive setting is the session start, and it is also the first thing everyone gets wrong when switching markets. An Initial Balance anchored to nine thirty New York applied to the FDAX measures nothing: the Eurex session started long before. Second point, pick extension until first touch rather than to the close if you follow several instruments, otherwise the chart fills with lines already consumed. Full extension earns its place when you follow a single contract and want the visual history of the day.
Typical case on ES: the first hour's Initial Balance is forty points wide, price breaks the high at eleven and comes back to test that same high from below twenty minutes later. The retest is the interesting moment, not the break. If order flow shows an absorption holding on that retest, the fifty percent extension becomes a natural target, with a clean invalidation just under the boundary.
⚠ The trap to avoid
The trap is believing the lines act on their own. The Initial Balance matters because volume concentrated there, not through geometric magic: on a major-release day where most of the volume arrives at half past two, the first hour describes nothing and its boundaries have no reason to hold. The second trap is stacking extensions on the screen until every break necessarily lands near a line.
Combine it with
Session Imbalance gives the frame, the volume profile says where the market actually accepted price, and the footprint says whether a boundary retest gets absorbed or goes through. For anyone working the open, the comparison with Deep-M IVB is useful: the same opening-range idea, but with targets computed from history rather than geometric extensions.
FAQ
What is the Initial Balance?+
It is the range formed by the first hour of the regular session, its high and low. It works as a reference because a large share of the day's volume trades there, and the market frequently comes back to test those boundaries.
Which start time for European futures?+
Nine o'clock for a European session, against nine thirty for US futures. It is the most commonly forgotten setting when switching instruments, and an Initial Balance anchored to the wrong open measures nothing useful.
What are the 50% and 100% extensions for?+
They project the height of the initial range beyond its boundaries and act as ranked targets after a break. They are exit-management references, not reversal levels to trade blind.
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