Bars and timeframes
A bar summarizes everything that happened during one time slice. You pick the timeframe in plain English — “on 5-minute bars”, “daily chart” — and AskFutures uses it. If you don’t say, it defaults to 1-minute bars.| Timeframe | Say it as | Typical use |
|---|---|---|
1m | ”1-minute bars” | Fine-grained intraday entries (the default) |
5m | ”5-minute chart” | Smoother intraday signals, fewer bars |
1h | ”1-hour bars” | Intraday trend / regime filter |
1d | ”daily” | Swing trades, multi-day breakouts |
1w | ”weekly” | Long-horizon bias, Commitment-of-Traders data |
Intraday timeframes (
1m, 5m, 1h) build their bars from the symbol’s real
trading session. Daily and weekly bars roll up the whole session into one bar
each. Across all of them, prices come from back-adjusted continuous contracts —
see where the data comes from.What’s in a bar
Each bar carries five core fields, plus a few values AskFutures derives for you. You refer to them in plain English — “when the close is above…”, “when the bar’s range is wide…” — and the engine reads the right field.| Field | Meaning |
|---|---|
| open | First trade price of the bar |
| high | Highest price during the bar |
| low | Lowest price during the bar |
| close | Last trade price of the bar |
| volume | Contracts traded during the bar |
| range (derived) | high − low — how wide the bar is |
| days-to-roll (derived) | Bars left before the contract rolls |
| days-to-expiration (derived) | Bars left until the contract expires |
The three strategy types
The strategy type decides how a position relates to the trading day. It’s separate from the timeframe — you can run a Day Trading strategy on 1-minute or 5-minute bars, for example.Day Trading
Intraday. Any position still open at the end of the session is closed
automatically (flat overnight). The default for intraday ideas.
24h
Intraday signals, but no forced close — a position can be held across the
session boundary until an exit rule fires.
Trade at close
Daily or weekly. Decisions are made on the close of each day or week — for
swing and positioning strategies.
- “hold positions overnight” → 24h
- “trade the daily chart” / “on the weekly close” → Trade at close
Day Trading — auto-flat at the session end
Day Trading — auto-flat at the session end
Built for intraday ideas. Entries and exits run on intraday bars, and an
end-of-day close is applied for you so you never carry risk overnight. You can
still add your own stops, targets, and trailing stops on top — whichever
triggers first wins, and the session close is the final backstop. Example:
“Trade MES on a VWAP cross and always close any open position at the end of
the day.”
24h — intraday signals, held across the close
24h — intraday signals, held across the close
Same intraday bars, but positions are not force-closed at the session end.
Use it when the idea genuinely spans the boundary — a breakout you want to hold
overnight, or a market you think of as round-the-clock. Exits happen only when
one of your exit rules fires.
Trade at close — daily / weekly decisions
Trade at close — daily / weekly decisions
Decisions are made on the close of each daily or weekly bar — the natural fit
for swing trades, multi-day breakouts, and Commitment-of-Traders overlays.
Example: “Go long GC on the daily chart only while the weekly close is above
its 10-week average.”
Sessions and anchoring
A session is the symbol’s real trading window — and it’s not the same for every contract. Equity-index futures, energy, grains, and metals each open and close at different times. AskFutures knows each symbol’s actual hours, so anything that’s “session-aware” anchors to the real open and close, not to midnight or a generic clock. That matters because several common tools reset or measure relative to the session:| Tool | Anchors to | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Opening range | The session open | ”the high of the first 15 minutes after the open” |
| VWAP | Resets each session open | ”buy when price crosses above the session VWAP” |
| End-of-day exit | The session close | Day Trading strategies flatten here |
| Time windows | The session clock | ”only enter between 09:30 and 11:00” |
| Running high / low | The current session | ”reclaim the session’s running high after a pullback” |
| Prior-session levels | The last completed session | ”push above the prior session’s high” |
Session-anchored tools reset at each new session. The opening range is
measured fresh every day; VWAP starts over at the open; a “first trade of the
day” filter re-arms each session. That’s what makes a rule like “each day, buy
the first time price makes two higher highs after the open” behave the same way
every session.
Multi-timeframe strategies
You can read a higher timeframe to set the bias and trade on a lower one — the classic “trend filter gates the entry” pattern. AskFutures lines the two up for you: the higher-timeframe condition has to be true for the lower-timeframe entry to fire. A few ways to phrase it:- “Only go long ES on the 5-minute chart when the daily 20-period EMA is rising; enter on a 5-minute close above the opening-range high.”
- “Buy NQ on a 1-minute VWAP reclaim only when the 1-hour RSI is above 50.”
- “Take long GC trades on the daily chart only while the weekly close is above its 10-week average.”