Price seems to say something new every day. Yet most of the chart was written long ago: the places
where price stopped, turned and hesitated. MarketLevelMap does not predict those places; it measures them,
dates them and maps them.
A sketch of the Critical Zones view: price moves between the bands where it reacted before.
Rules, not opinions. Every zone is derived from closed candles by the same rules. Nobody draws them by hand.
One method for every asset. Whatever the market, no asset gets rules of its own.
Every zone has a date. You can always see when, and from which data, everything on the chart was determined.
No silent changes. A zone shown yesterday does not move today without anyone being told.
The approach: structure-based analysis
Indicators turn price into a second, derived line. Structure-based analysis looks at price itself: Where did
price stop? Where did it turn? Which level did it break, and did it come back to test it? The answers are already
on the chart; the hard part is reading them with the same care every time, without being fooled by the eye.
For every analysis, the MarketLevelMap engine walks the price history from start to finish with the same steps:
Closed candles only. A candle that has not closed never enters a calculation. For crypto assets the
candles come from the Binance spot market.
Turning points. The swing highs and lows where price changed direction are
found. A high counts as a swing high only after the candles to its right have closed too; nothing is repainted
afterwards.
Where the reaction came from. The price area each turn started from is measured. That is where a zone's
geometry comes from, not from round numbers or guesswork.
Agreement and balance. Reactions that repeat in the same area at different times are weighed together with
the balance areas where price moved sideways. One reaction is a hint; reactions
that keep coming back to the same place are a structure.
Structural strength. A zone's weight comes from how many reactions it has and how good they are, not from
how close it is to the price.
Which assets are analysed?
An asset needs at least 320 weeks (about 6 years) of
candle history before it can be analysed. Structure can only be read reliably over a long enough history, so newly
listed assets stay out of the analyses for a while.
Two views: Critical Zones and Price Action
The analysis page looks at the same chart with two different questions. They are separate methods; neither uses the
other's result.
Critical Zones
“Where has price reacted before?”
Support and resistance bands derived from the chart's long history. The chart shows the three nearest supports
below the price and the three nearest resistances above it. Valid zones further away are not deleted but kept in
reserve; when a visible zone loses its validity, the next one takes its place.
When price breaks a zone and builds a new structure, the recent zones found in that re-evaluation are added
as well. Being support or resistance is not a zone's identity but where the price is right now: a broken support can
show up as resistance in the next analysis.
Price Action
“Which range is price in, and which way is the structure working?”
The confirmed trading range built by a strong impulse: the range high (RH), the range low (RL) and the
equilibrium (EQ) in between. Whether price sits in the upper half of the range (premium) or the lower half
(discount) can be read at a glance.
No confirmed range, no chart. A range is never invented, and an empty drawing is never shown.
The Price Action view: price dips below the range low and closes back inside (sweep). It then closes beyond the protected high of the downtrend and the trend turns (CHoCH ↑); when the new high is cleared as well, the uptrend continues (BOS ↑). AVWAP starts from the protected low left by the latest BOS.
Four more pieces of information sit on top of the range. All follow the same principle: closed candles and
thresholds measured in volatility (ATR).
When a candle closes beyond the latest swing high or low in the trend's direction by at least a tenth of ATR,
the trend continues (BOS). Every BOS leaves a protected level; only a close through that level says the trend
has turned (CHoCH). A few wicks poking through are not enough.
A price gap left behind by a sharp move. The middle candle's body must be at least 0.8 ATR and the gap at least
0.15 ATR. Only the unfilled part is drawn. Calculated on 4H, 1D and 1W.
The volume-weighted average price traded since the protected level. Price holding above it means buyers since
that point are, on average, in profit.
Why a band, not a line?
Price does not touch a level to the cent and turn. One candle's wick dips a little below it, the next stays a little
above; the reaction happens in an area. A single line cannot describe that and turns every small overshoot into
a break. The result is levels that keep “breaking” on the chart without ever really breaking.
The same candles, drawn twice. With a line, three wicks look like three separate breaks. With a band they all stay inside the zone; only a close beyond the far edge clears it.
A band's width is not arbitrary: it is measured from price's actual reactions in that area. Reading it is simple:
A close inside the band: the zone is being tested.
A close beyond the far edge of the band: the zone has been cleared.
A zone's story: (1) the first reaction, (2–3) tests that wear it down, (4) a close beyond the far edge, (5) a retest from below, (6) the old support is now resistance.
Key levels
Zones come from structure; key levels come from the calendar. They are references everyone calculates the same way,
showing where the market stood at the start of each period. Whether price is above or below them sums up the mood of
the day, week, month and year at a glance. Times are in UTC.
Code
Level
What it tells you
DO
Daily open
Today's 00:00 UTC open. The first place to look for whether buyers or sellers lead the day.
WO
Weekly open
The Monday 00:00 UTC open. The reference for the week's direction.
PWO
Previous weekly open
Last week's open. Places this week against the one before.
MO
Monthly open
The open of the month's first day. The line between a green and a red monthly candle.
YO
Yearly open
The open of the year's first day. Up or down since the start of the year.
MH · MM · ML
Monday range
The high, middle and low of the week's first day. The week's first reactions often take shape within it.
ATH
All-time high
The highest price in the candle history used for the analysis (Binance spot for crypto assets). It can differ slightly from the ATH on other exchanges.
DO, WO and MO come from the live price feed; the other levels are as of the analysis time.
Timeframes: why 1H, 4H, 1D and 1W?
Each timeframe describes a different span of the same market. Analyses are made on four timeframes:
1HShort-term structure within days.
4HMoves that span several days and weeks.
1DTrends that span weeks and months.
1WLong-term context; the widest zones and the big cycles.
Below 1H the number of candles grows quickly and most reactions are momentary noise; structure can no longer be read
reliably. That is why there is no 15-minute or lower timeframe. No timeframe is “more right” than another. Price holding
above support on 1D can be under resistance on 1H; both are true. More:
When timeframes seem to disagree.
Analysis time: why zones do not update live
The site shows two kinds of information. Prices and candles are live; they come straight from the market.
Zones, ranges and levels belong to the analysis time; every analysis shows its date.
This is a deliberate choice. A zone is a structural decision drawn from price history. A zone redrawn with every new
candle cannot be trusted. If the level you looked at yesterday has quietly shifted today, you cannot even tell what your
decision was based on.
After the analysis time, candles keep coming in live while the zones stay where they are. If a candle closes beyond a zone's far edge, the zone is not silently deleted; the structure is re-evaluated.
Zones are still not left to themselves:
Monitoring. Newly closed candles are compared with the drawn zones: no contact, contact, or a possible breach.
Review. A possible breach alone changes nothing; a re-evaluation is started deliberately.
All or nothing. A re-evaluation either succeeds as a whole and a new map is published, or nothing changes. A
half-updated map is never published.
A new date. The updated analysis is published with a new analysis time.
The structure, sweep, FVG and AVWAP information in the Price Action view is the only exception: it is updated with
the candles closed up to the publication and carries an “as of …” note under its tables. The range itself stays as it
was at the analysis time.
What it is not
Not a signal
It does not say buy or sell. It gives no entries, targets or stop-loss levels.
Not advice
The content is for general information only; it knows nothing of your situation or your risk tolerance.
Not a prophecy
It does not say whether a zone will hold or break. It makes no claims about hit rates.
Not infallible
Rules cannot catch every case. The engine can miss zones or rate some as weak; consistent
rules do not mean they are always right.
Trading in financial markets carries high risk. A zone, a level or a structure event is never a reason to act on its
own. Use MarketLevelMap like a map: it shows where you are and what lies along the way. Which way you go is your
decision.
