Telling a retest from a failed break without rewriting history

A break that immediately returns through the zone is not automatically a trap, and a retest that wicks beyond the band is not automatically a new trend. Both events happen in ordinary weeks. The job is to decide, in advance, what would count as acceptance.

We ask traders to write the rule before the event. For a bullish break of resistance, acceptance might be a daily close above the zone plus a subsequent four-hour hold on a revisit. For a failure, a daily close back inside and then below the band. The numbers are yours; the point is that they exist before the wick arrives.

Where people cheat is in the redraw. Price pokes through, they move the zone up to the poke, and the failed break is relabelled as ‘the real level was higher’. Sometimes the zone did need widening because the original band ignored a cluster of bodies. Often it is just pride protecting a line.

A retest that we treat as tradeable usually looks dull: less range than the break bar, a close back in the direction of the break, and no urgent need to invent a second zone three ticks away. A failed break looks busy: long wicks both ways, a close back through, and a sudden interest in a smaller timeframe to explain the pain.

In clinic we photograph the chart before anyone speaks. That photograph is the map you are accountable to. If you want to change it after the close, you change it on a new sheet and you write why. History stays put.

Cloud Mappoint publishes mapping notes as tuition, not as a prompt to deal. If you want the idea walked through on your own charts, request a sitting.