you mark a fair value gap on your chart, price comes back and closes straight through it, and the gap is gone.

most traders delete the box right there, but an inverse fair value gap is what that same zone becomes once price closes through it. plenty of traders treat the inverted zone as a better level than the original gap ever was.

this post covers what an inverse fair value gap is, how one forms, and what edgeful's data shows about how often the setup gets a chance to appear on NQ and ES.

table of contents

• what is an inverse fair value gap?
• how an inverse fair value gap forms
• how often FVGs fully fill: the NQ and ES data
• close or wick: why your mitigation rule changes the count
• how traders use inverse fair value gaps
• what the fair value gaps report covers
• key takeaways

what is an inverse fair value gap?

an inverse fair value gap (iFVG) is a fair value gap that price has closed through, flipping the zone's directional bias to the opposite side.

start with the standard pattern. a fair value gap is a 3-candle imbalance. it's bullish when candle 1's high sits below candle 3's low, and bearish when candle 1's low sits above candle 3's high. that leaves a price range in the middle that never traded properly in both directions. the FVG best practices guide covers the base pattern in depth.

the usual expectation is that price comes back to fill it. when price instead pushes all the way through and closes on the other side, the zone doesn't stop mattering. it changes sides:

• a bullish FVG that price closes below becomes a bearish iFVG, and traders watch it as resistance
• a bearish FVG that price closes above becomes a bullish iFVG, and traders watch it as support

you'll see the same thing written as inverse FVG or shortened to iFVG, and the term comes out of ICT material, where it also shows up as an "inversion" fair value gap. the logic traders give for it is straightforward: price already pushed through that range with conviction, so the same range is worth watching from the other direction on the next test.

how an inverse fair value gap forms

the sequence has 3 steps, and the middle one is the precondition for everything after it.

• a 3-candle fair value gap forms during the session
• price returns and fully closes through the gap rather than stalling inside it
• the zone keeps its original high and low boundaries, but traders now watch it from the opposite side

an FVG that price never revisits stays an unfilled FVG. one that price wicks into and rejects from stays a standard FVG too. without a full close through the gap there is no inversion.

so before you build anything around iFVG zones, you need to know how often an FVG gets fully closed through in the first place. every inverse FVG on your chart started as a gap that price committed through.

how often FVGs fully fill: the NQ and ES data

edgeful's fair value gaps report tracks 3-candle FVGs and how often each one gets filled within the same session. full mitigation on a candle close is exactly the precondition for an inversion, so the report tells you how often that happens.

according to edgeful data, over the 6 months from March 14 to September 13, 2026, in the NY session (9:30am to 4:00pm ET), on 15-minute candles, measuring a full 100% fill on a candle close:

NQ

• bullish FVGs: 179 of 351 fully filled, or 51.0%
• bearish FVGs: 126 of 256 fully filled, or 49.2%
• all FVGs: 305 of 607, or 50.2%

ES

• bullish FVGs: 164 of 332 fully filled, or 49.4%
• bearish FVGs: 122 of 272 fully filled, or 44.9%
• all FVGs: 286 of 604, or 47.4%

so roughly half. on NQ it's essentially 50/50, and on ES it runs slightly under half, with bearish gaps filling less often than bullish ones on both tickers.

about half the FVGs you mark will never invert, because price never closes through them. they either go untouched or get partially filled and rejected. if your plan depends on inverse fair value gaps appearing, you're working with roughly half the gaps on your chart, not all of them.

305 full mitigations on NQ over 6 months in one session works out to about 2 a day.

your candle timeframe moves these numbers as much as your ticker does. the same NQ window on 5-minute candles instead of 15-minute puts 1,305 of 1,952 FVGs at a full fill, or 66.9%. smaller candles produce more gaps and fill more of them.

pull your own ticker, session, timeframe, and window in the fair value gaps report before you take any of these numbers as yours.

close or wick: why your mitigation rule changes the count

your mitigation setting changes the numbers more than anything else you'll adjust.

"mitigation" needs a definition. you can count a gap as filled when a candle closes into it, or when a wick merely touches it. the edgeful report lets you set either one, and the two produce very different counts.

same NQ window as above, same 6 months, same NY session, same 15-minute candles:

• close mitigation: 305 of 607 FVGs fully filled, or 50.2%
• wick mitigation: 384 of 607 FVGs fully filled, or 63.3%

that's a 13 percentage point spread on identical price data. the only thing that changed was the rule for what counts as filled.

for an inverse FVG specifically, the stricter close rule is the one that matches the concept. an inversion is supposed to mean price committed through the level, and a candle body closing beyond the gap is the evidence of that. a wick poking through and pulling back is closer to a standard FVG rejection than an inversion.

wick mitigation gives you more zones. close mitigation gives you fewer.

how traders use inverse fair value gaps

a few common approaches, all of which need testing against your own ticker and session before you trade them:

• treating an inverted zone as support or resistance on the next test, on the argument that price already committed through it once
• stacking an iFVG against a level from another report, so the zone has a second reason to matter beyond the gap itself
• using the original gap boundaries as the zone rather than redrawing anything, since inversion doesn't move the high or the low
• checking whether full mitigation happens more often on certain weekdays for your ticker, which you can do by filtering the fair value gaps report to individual weekdays
• combining the concept with the ICT midnight open retracement for traders already working inside ICT material

if you want more on the standard pattern before layering the inversion on top, the FVG indicator for TradingView post goes deeper on plotting the base setup.

what the fair value gaps report covers

edgeful's fair value gaps report measures how often an FVG gets filled within the session. it does not track what happens to the zone afterward.

so the numbers above tell you how often the precondition for an inverse fair value gap occurs. they do not tell you how often price respects an inverted zone on the next test.

that second question is the one you'd actually want answered before trading it, and the report doesn't measure it. anyone quoting you a percentage for how often iFVG zones hold should be asked where that number came from.

what you can do is test it yourself. mark the full mitigations on your ticker, note what price did on the next approach to that zone, and build your own sample. the numbers move with your ticker, your session, your timeframe, and your lookback window, so the sample has to be yours.

key takeaways

• an inverse fair value gap is an FVG that price has closed through, which flips the zone to the opposite directional bias: bullish FVGs become resistance, bearish FVGs become support
• the inverted zone keeps the original gap's high and low, so nothing gets redrawn
• full mitigation is the precondition for an inversion, and according to edgeful data it happened on 50.2% of NQ FVGs and 47.4% of ES FVGs in the NY session on 15-minute candles over the 6 months ending September 13, 2026
• roughly half the FVGs you mark will never invert, so inverse fair value gaps apply to a subset of the gaps on your chart
• your mitigation rule moves the count substantially: for NQ in the NY session over that same window, 50.2% on a candle close versus 63.3% on a wick touch
• your candle timeframe moves it too: the same NQ window on 5-minute candles puts full fills at 66.9% instead of 50.2%
• the close rule is the better match for the inverse fair value gap concept, because a body close beyond the gap is the evidence that price committed
• edgeful's data covers how often gaps fill, not how often inverted zones hold, so test that second part on your own ticker

trading involves risk. past performance and historical data do not guarantee future results. the statistics referenced in this post are based on historical data and may not reflect future market conditions. always trade with proper risk management.