Quarterly Theory Time Cycles: Quarters and True Opens on Your Chart

Quarterly Theory is only useful if you can see the quarters. Keeping track of which week of the month, which session of the day and which 22.5-minute slice of the 90-minute cycle you are in is hard to do in your head, and it is exactly what Time Cycles QT draws on your chart.

Quarters at every level

Every cycle splits into four quarters, coloured the same way at every level so you can read them at a glance: Q1 grey, Q2 red, Q3 green, Q4 blue. The levels, in New York time, with the trading day running 18:00 to 18:00:

• Yearly: 3-month quarters, with the yearly True Open in April
• Monthly: week quarters anchored to the month's first Monday, True Open on the second Monday
• Weekly: day quarters Monday to Thursday, with Friday treated separately; True Open Monday 18:00
• Daily: 6-hour sessions, Asia 18:00 to 00:00, London 00:00 to 06:00, AM 06:00 to 12:00, PM 12:00 to 18:00; True Open at midnight
• Session: 90-minute quarters, with session True Opens at 19:30, 01:30, 07:30 and 13:30
• 90 minutes: 22.5-minute micro quarters

The indicator picks the right level for your timeframe: yearly quarters on the daily chart, monthly on 4-hour, weekly on 1-hour, sessions from 15 minutes up, and 90-minute plus micro quarters at 5 minutes and below. You can show quarters as boxes or as vertical lines.

Opening levels and the True Open dashboard

Time Cycles QT draws the opening prices traders reference most: the micro session open (TMSO), the Asia, London, AM and PM opens (AO, LO, AMO, PMO), and the daily, weekly, monthly and yearly True Opens (TDO, TWO, TMO, TYO). A small dashboard shows whether price is currently above or below each one, which is the quickest way to tell whether you are on the premium or discount side of each cycle.

Sweeps of previous quarters

When price takes out the high or low of a previous quarter or micro quarter, the indicator marks it with an ✖ and a dashed line back to the level that was swept. Sweeps of the prior quarter are often where a Quarterly Theory manipulation leg ends, so they are worth seeing without having to draw them by hand.

Asia range and time grid

The Asia session high and low are drawn as they form, with an internal grid of quarters and micro quarters. A time grid of vertical lines labels the upcoming boundaries ahead of price, so you can see the next quarter change coming.

Using it with SSMT

Time Cycles QT shows the structure; the SSMT Detector QT shows when two consecutive quarters diverge from a correlated market. Together they answer the two Quarterly Theory questions: which quarter am I in, and did the correlated market confirm the move into it? For the classic ICT session clock (90-minute cycles and killzones) see Time Cycles.

Common questions

Can I change the timezone? The QT timezone defaults to New York, the convention Quarterly Theory uses, and can be changed in settings.

Does it work on forex and crypto? Yes. The quarters are time-based, so they render on any symbol.