When the opening range stops mattering
Clues that the first-hour box has been accepted or discarded — and why redrawing it mid-morning creates noise.
Opening-range clinics spend half the morning on a single temptation: expanding the box every time a wick prints beyond it. Structure only helps if the boundary can fail.
Accepted range
If price returns into the box and spends consecutive bars rotating inside it, treat the excursion as a probe. Your original high and low still govern. Journal the probe; do not erase the lines.
Rejected range
A decisive break with follow-through — rising lows after a break above, or lower highs after a break below — is permission to promote a new scaffold. Even then, keep the old range on the chart as context. Many afternoon repairs still reference that first hour.
Classroom habit
We ask students to write one sentence: “The opening range still governs because…” or “The opening range is spent because…”. If you cannot finish the sentence, you are not ready to redraw. That pause is the entire point of the clinic.