Concepts

Price action vocabulary, drawn precisely

The terms your setups are built from. Each card is a definition you can hold to — and a diagram of what it actually looks like on a chart.

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Structure

Fractal High / LowFH / FL

A swing point where price stopped and reversed — the building block of market structure.

A fractal high is a candle whose high is higher than the highs of its neighbors; a fractal low mirrors it on the downside. Each fractal marks the exact price where one side of the market ran out of pressure.

Structure is read from fractals: an uptrend is a chain of higher fractal highs and higher fractal lows. When price trades through a fractal, the imbalance has shifted — that break, not an indicator, is the earliest structural signal you can get.

Dealing RangeDR

The range between the last significant fractal high and fractal low — the map price is currently trading inside.

Once a swing high and swing low are both in place, everything between them is the dealing range. Its extremes hold external liquidity; the zones inside it (gaps, blocks) are internal points of interest.

Most confusion about "which level matters" disappears when you first fix the range: price is always either working toward the range's edge or reacting from it. Premium (upper half) and discount (lower half) only have meaning inside a defined range.

Structure Break (BOS / CHoCH)BOS / CHoCH

Price trading through a fractal: continuation when with the trend (BOS), first warning of reversal when against it (CHoCH).

A break of structure (BOS) is price closing through the last fractal in the direction of the standing trend — the trend re-confirming itself. A change of character (CHoCH) is the first close through a fractal against the trend.

The two look identical on a candle and mean opposite things; only context separates them. A CHoCH alone is a warning, not a reversal — most traders' losses against trends come from treating the first CHoCH as a completed turn.

Premium & DiscountPD

The upper and lower halves of a dealing range: sell expensive, buy cheap — relative to the range's midpoint.

Split the current dealing range at its midpoint (equilibrium). Everything above is premium — expensive relative to this range; everything below is discount — cheap. The names encode the logic: look for longs in discount and shorts in premium.

The concept has no meaning without a defined range: 'price is in premium' is always an answer to 'premium of WHICH range'. Re-anchoring to a different timeframe's range flips the label — which is why premium/discount arguments between traders are usually range-selection arguments in disguise.

Narrative

The one-sentence story of where price is coming from and where it is likely going — decided before any entry is considered.

A narrative names the origin, the destination and the condition: "Daily swept last week's low and reclaimed it; H4 builds higher lows; longs from discount toward the range high." It is falsifiable on purpose — the chart can prove it wrong, which is what makes it useful.

Entries are auditions for a narrative that already exists. If you cannot write the sentence, there is no trade to look for — and when the chart breaks the sentence, every setup derived from it expires with it.

Displacement (импульсный сдвиг)

An aggressive, one-sided burst of candles that leaves imbalances behind — the market showing its hand.

Displacement is not just movement but violence: consecutive full-bodied candles, little overlap, fresh gaps left in the wake. It marks the moment one side overwhelmed the book rather than negotiated with it.

Its information is directional conviction: structure broken BY displacement carries more weight than structure broken by drift. The gaps it leaves become the natural pullback zones for continuation entries.

Timeframe HierarchyHTF / LTF

Higher timeframes decide direction and location; lower timeframes only refine the entry inside them.

Every lower-timeframe structure lives inside one higher-timeframe candle. A 'downtrend' on M5 is routinely just the pullback leg of an H4 up-move — zoom out and the contradiction dissolves.

The hierarchy assigns jobs: HTF sets the bias and the zones, LTF supplies the trigger inside them. Trouble starts when jobs swap — deriving bias from M5 or demanding entry precision from the daily.

Consolidation → Expansion

The market's breathing cycle: contraction builds energy and stops; expansion spends them in one direction.

Ranges and trends are not different markets but phases of one cycle. Contraction compresses volatility and stacks liquidity on both sides; expansion releases it, usually after taking one side first.

The practical read is sequencing, not prediction: fresh compression near a key level means energy is loading; the direction is revealed by which side gets swept and rejected — not by guessing inside the box.

Zones & Imbalance

Fair Value Gap (гэп неэффективности)FVG

A three-candle imbalance: price moved so fast that one side never traded.

When a candle expands hard, the wicks of its neighbors can fail to overlap — the range between the first candle's high and the third candle's low (in an up-move) is a gap where almost no two-way trade happened.

Markets tend to revisit these gaps: the untraded range is inefficient pricing, and a return into the gap is where many continuation entries are structured. A gap that price closes through and holds beyond becomes an inverted FVG and often flips its role.

Rejection BlockRB

A cluster of long wicks at a level — proof that price was aggressively refused there.

A rejection block forms where candles repeatedly poke a level with wicks but cannot close beyond it. The wick zone — from the candle bodies to the extreme of the wicks — maps where resting orders absorbed the push.

The zone matters more than the exact tick: a revisit into the wick area with slowing momentum is the classic read, and a body close through the whole block invalidates it.

Order BlockOB

The last opposite candle before an impulsive move — the footprint of the orders that caused it.

When price launches impulsively, the final down-candle before an up-impulse (or up-candle before a down-impulse) marks where large orders were filled. That candle's range is the order block — a zone the move originated from.

The classic read: a return into the block, especially its opening price, is where the same interest may defend the position. A body close through the entire block invalidates it — and often turns it into a breaker on the other side.

Support & ResistanceSNR

Price areas that repeatedly stall or reverse the market — zones of heavy past dealing, not exact lines.

A level where price reversed once may be chance; a zone that turned price several times maps real resting interest. Support and resistance are areas of proven two-way dealing — draw them as zones with depth, not single prices.

Roles flip on acceptance: support broken and then retested from below becomes resistance, and vice versa. The retest after the flip, not the break itself, is where the cleaner risk usually sits.

Breaker BlockBB

An order block that failed and flipped: price broke through it, and it now works from the other side.

When price closes through an order block instead of respecting it, the trapped positions inside become the fuel of the opposite side. On the return, the same zone often acts in its new role — a failed demand block resists, a failed supply block supports.

The breaker read requires the full sequence: a zone, a genuine body-close violation, and a return. Skipping the middle step turns every old block into a 'breaker' — and the label into noise.

Liquidity

Equal Highs / LowsEQH / EQL

Two or more swings stopping at the same price — a shelf of resting stops the market can target.

Every trader who sold in front of equal highs has a stop just above them. That cluster of stops is liquidity: a fuel pocket the market can accelerate into, sweep, and reverse from.

Equal extremes are therefore two-sided information: a magnet while they hold, and a spent catalyst once swept. Chasing the breakout through them is how the sweep gets funded.

Liquidity SweepSweep

A push through an obvious level that fills resting stops — then reverses, leaving a wick behind.

Obvious levels accumulate stops. A sweep is the market trading through such a level far enough to execute them, finding no continuation interest, and reversing — the level 'holds' after first being violated.

The tell is the close: a sweep pierces with a wick and closes back inside; a genuine breakout closes beyond and builds acceptance. Trading the retest after the close, not the first touch, is how the two are told apart in real time.

Inducement (приманка)IDM

A tempting minor level in front of the real zone — bait that fills early entries and fuels the move into the actual point of interest.

Before price reaches a significant zone, it often forms a minor fractal just in front of it. Early entrants position off that minor level; their stops become the liquidity that powers the final push into the real zone.

Practical use is patience: when a setup zone sits just beyond an obvious minor level, expect that level to be run first. The entry that survives is the one placed at the zone the inducement was funding, not at the bait itself.

Internal & External LiquidityIRL / ERL

Two magnet types inside a range: imbalances within it (internal) and the stops beyond its extremes (external).

Within a dealing range, price oscillates between two kinds of targets. External range liquidity (ERL) is the stops resting beyond the range's high and low. Internal range liquidity (IRL) is the zones inside — gaps and blocks left by the moves that built the range.

The alternation is the map: after sweeping external liquidity, price typically rotates back to internal zones, and from internal zones it draws toward the opposite external pool. Asking 'which liquidity was just taken, and which remains' locates you inside the range's cycle.

Previous Highs & LowsPDH/PDL · PWH/PWL

Yesterday's and last week's extremes — the most universally watched liquidity shelves on any chart.

The previous day's high and low (and the weekly pair above them) are marked on more screens than any other levels — which is exactly why stops cluster beyond them and why price gravitates there.

They serve two jobs at once: targets for an open position trending toward them, and sweep candidates for a reversal once tagged. Whether a tag becomes continuation or reversal is read from the close and the reaction, not from the touch itself.

SMT DivergenceSMT

Two correlated instruments disagreeing at an extreme — one makes a new high or low, the other refuses.

When EURUSD sweeps a low but GBPUSD holds above its own, the divergence suggests the sweep was liquidity collection, not genuine weakness — smart-money technique reads the refusal as the honest instrument.

SMT is a confluence, never a trigger: it strengthens a setup that already exists at a level, and it means nothing mid-range. The tighter the usual correlation, the more information the disagreement carries.

Time & Sessions

Kill Zones (сессионные окна)KZ

The session windows — London and New York opens — where volatility and volume concentrate.

Price does not move uniformly through the day. The hours around the London open and the New York open carry most of the day's range; the Asian session usually builds the range those opens later run.

Time is a filter, not a signal: the same setup at a kill zone open and in the mid-session dead zone are not the same trade. Backtest your win rate by session before trusting any entry model around the clock.

Session & Period OpensDO / WO / MO

The opening prices of the day, week and month — reference levels institutional models price everything against.

The open of a period splits everything after it into 'above open' and 'below open' — the simplest possible bias line. Weekly and monthly opens act as magnets and reaction levels for the whole period; the daily open frames the intraday session.

A common playbook: in a bullish week, price dips below the weekly open early (funding longs at a discount) before trending above it. An open left with a gap — price starting the week away from Friday's close — is itself a level the market frequently returns to test.

Accumulation → Manipulation → DistributionAMD / PO3

The session template: build a range, run one side of it, then spend the session traveling the other way.

Many sessions print the same three acts. Accumulation: a range forms around the open and stacks stops on both sides. Manipulation: one side is swept — the false move. Distribution: the real move runs opposite the sweep for the rest of the session.

The template's value is patience and location: if the day is bullish, the manipulation leg is the discount entry you were told to wait for. Its danger is hindsight — every day fits AMD after the close; only the sweep of a pre-defined level makes it tradeable in real time.

Asian RangeAR

The consolidation printed during the Asian session — the box whose sides London so often runs first.

With the US closed and Europe asleep, the Asian hours usually build a narrow rotation. Its high and low accumulate the first stops of the new day — which is why the London open so frequently begins by trading through one side of the box.

The classic sequence is Asian range → London sweep of one side → the day's real move away from the sweep. Marking the box before London is a two-minute habit that frames the whole morning.

True Day Open (истинное открытие дня)TDO

The 00:00 New York open — the intraday anchor that splits the day into discount and premium halves.

Midnight New York marks where the institutional day begins. Price above the true day open is trading at a premium to the day; below it, at a discount — a one-line bias tool that resets every 24 hours.

In a bullish context the playbook expects an early dip below the TDO (the day's manipulation) before the trend leg above it. Like every open, it is a reference that frames trades, not a signal that takes them.