Overview
Which direction the first gap forms in, across every day tested
Days Analyzed
4,497
every NQ trading day, 2008–2026
Bullish FPFVG
2,320
51.6% of all days
Bearish FPFVG
2,177
48.4% of all days
The Bottom Line
Almost every first fair value gap gets filled the same day it forms — 94.3% of the time,
price comes back through the zone before the 4:00 PM close. The 5.7% that don't get left open
almost always get filled eventually anyway: 94.6% of those unmitigated gaps still close within
the dataset, most of them within the first week.
Same-Day Mitigation
Out of every FPFVG formed, did price return to the zone before the close?
Every FPFVG, Same-Day Result
Reading left to right — every gap ends up in one of these two buckets by 4:00 PM ET the day it forms.
94.3% — mitigated same day, price returned to the zone before 4:00 PM ET
5.7% — left unmitigated, 257 days where price never touched the zone intraday
Of The 257 Unmitigated Days
A gap that didn't fill the same day isn't gone — does it ever fill later?
Eventually Filled
Of the 257 gaps left open at the close, how many ever got mitigated on a future day.
Filled Later (Ever)
94.6%
243 of 257 gaps eventually mitigated on a future day
Never Filled
The rare gaps that stayed open across the entire dataset.
Never Filled In Data
5.4%
only 14 gaps across 18 years stayed open permanently
Fill Timing — When Filled Later
Of the 243 gaps that did eventually fill, how long it took
Cumulative — each row includes everything from the rows above it. "Within 1 week" already includes the "within 1 day" gaps.
Average
Across every gap that did eventually fill, it took an average of 20.5 days to happen —
but the numbers above show that's pulled upward by a long tail: nearly a third fill within a single
day, and almost two-thirds fill within a week.