Concepts
Find, filter, name and draw market concepts — then rewind what was knowable.
Concepts are rules that read your candles and draw what they find: gaps, zones, levels, breaks. Every find is an observation, not a signal and not a recommendation — what you do with it is up to you.
They run on the candles your chart already holds. Nothing extra is loaded, and nothing is sent to us.
Switching them on
Open Tools at the top right, then the Concepts tab. Candlestick shapes live on the separate Patterns tab — same engine, other library.
The Concepts tab shows how many are switched on for the chart you clicked last. The list applies to one chart — the same “which chart” the watchlist uses when it sends a symbol; on a Surface an amber outline marks the chart in question. Two chart tabs side by side can show different concepts, and your selection survives tab switches, reloads and another device.
Each row has a ? that opens this handbook on that concept’s page (the drawer rolls down over the desk).
Line width under the Concepts tab sets the stroke of concept zones and levels on this chart. Pattern text size and indicator line width are separate controls on their own tabs.
In a Surface tab the selection applies to every chart in that tab.
Categories
The panel groups concepts by what they describe: Structure & Movement, Gaps & Inefficiencies, Zones, Liquidity, PD Arrays & Ranges and Models & Setups. Categories describe mechanics, not schools, so Neutral or ICT wording does not move a concept to another category. Clear, beside the count, turns off every concept in that category. Switched-on concepts are listed under Active on chart. Click a row there to open its settings; the triangle sits to the left of the name, and a second click closes it. Clicking a row in a category switches that concept on or off. Click a category header to open or close it. With the keyboard, focus the header and press Enter or Space. The count on the right shows how many concepts in that category are switched on. It stays muted at zero and turns amber as soon as one is on, so you can see an active category without reading every fraction.
Concepts stay in that category order. The search field under the Tools tabs finds a name faster than an alphabetical list.
Search and trading schools
The search field sits in the bar under the Tools tabs, next to line width. It finds a concept by its visible or Neutral name, abbreviation, alias, internal ID, category or trading school. The search knows all published school terms, so searching for “FVG” still finds Price gap while Neutral wording is selected.
Wording at the top of the list also holds the school filter: All schools and every school that actually has concepts in the catalog. Choosing a school shows only its assigned concepts. Small badges on the rows show all school assignments; a concept may belong to more than one school. Categories with no matches temporarily disappear. Starting a search or selecting a school opens the remaining categories so the results are visible. Hide used-up beside the chart name flips to Dim used-up: used-up zones either leave the chart or stay in a muted colour.
Categories and schools answer different questions: a category says what the mechanic does, while a school says where that rule is used or named. No empty future school is shown. For example, Wyckoff appears only after its first concept has been checked and assigned.
Wording
In the wording menu choose ICT wording or Neutral wording. Further school wordings appear when those school profiles are added.
That is a rename, not a second calculation. The same gap is a “Fair Value Gap” under ICT in both desk languages. Neutral wording follows the desk language: “Price gap” in English, “Preislücke” in German — same candles, same finds, different words.
A school profile does not have to rename or contain every concept. Missing wording falls back to the Neutral name; use the separate school filter when you want to hide concepts that do not belong to that school.
A school may bring different default numbers (different numbers, same rule). Anything you moved on a slider yourself survives the switch.
Each concept page below spells out the Neutral English name, the Neutral German name and the ICT term.
Used-up zones
A zone that price has come back for (touched or filled, depending on the concept) stops counting. By default it vanishes once that happens — the picture shows what is still valid at the as-of candle. The candle that touches or fills a zone is the one that ends it: at the close of the candle before, the zone still counts; at the close of that candle, it is gone — and the answer is the same whichever candle you rewind to.
At the top of the panel, next to the wording, Dim used-up keeps those zones in view: grey, frozen at the candle that used them up, with the name still on them. They are history, not something you could still have traded at that time. Hide used-up is the default.
This does not change when a gap counts as filled — that is still the per-concept setting.
Per-concept settings and color
Clicking a name unfolds its rules: thresholds, lookback lengths, the swing method. Above them sits the active school’s one-liner and its other names for the same thing.
The same section has a color control. Picking one stores it for this concept on the current chart tab; Reset returns to the theme’s directional or neutral color. A color change only repaints existing finds — it does not rerun their rules.
Some concepts read other concepts’ finds. When a switched-off concept says “Computed for …, not drawn”, it runs because another one needs it — it gets no ink, and its settings then come from the concept that asked for it.
If you also switch on that source concept itself, its own row controls the shared source settings. Matching controls in dependent rows are dimmed and read-only, show the value the source row runs with, and say where it comes from (“from Swing range”) until the source row is switched off again. The message strip notes it too, in grey: intended, but worth knowing.
When two concepts want different settings for the same source
Golden retracement zone and Range midpoint both read the Swing range. Set the swing lookback to 5 on the golden zone and switch on Range midpoint with its defaults, and the two ask the shared Swing range for different numbers. The Swing range then runs on its defaults — for all of its settings, not only the one in dispute — and the picture changes: on the reference series 51 golden zones instead of 30.
The desk says so in two places. The message strip names the control and every value: “Swing range: Range midpoint (3) · Golden retracement zone (5) want different values for Swing lookback — computed with 3.” And on both rows the shared controls are dimmed, show the value that actually ran, and read “default after a conflict with …” underneath. To get your own number back, either set the same value on both rows or switch on the Swing range itself — then its row decides.
Values outside the range are limited — and shown
Every control has a range, and a stored value can lie outside it: a setting from an older version, a school's preset, a number typed somewhere else. The desk does not compute with a value the rule cannot run with. Counts (bars, touches) are held inside their range and rounded to whole numbers — there is no such thing as 3.4 bars. Sizes (a percentage, a ratio) have a floor at zero and no ceiling: there is no negative distance, and a size above the slider's end is still a fair question.
When that happens, the control shows the value that ran with one word next to it — “10 (limited)”, “3 (rounded)”, “0 (raised to 0)” — and names the stored value underneath. The message strip says the same in grey. Move the control once and the stored value is replaced. Two concepts whose stored values differ only beyond the range — 12 and 10 with a maximum of 10 — are not a conflict: both ask for 10.
As-of time — what was visible when
As soon as one concept is on, a strip with a slider appears under the chart. It moves the as-of time: “what could I have known at this candle?”
- LIVE means everything up to the last closed candle.
- -25 means 25 candles back. A dashed needle marks the spot.
- The mouse wheel over the strip steps the as-of time (drag still works).
This is not a filter over the finished picture — it is a real recomputation up to that point. Some finds only come into existence through later candles. A pool you would have seen at candle 24 may be absorbed into a wider one twenty candles later; a filtered view would then show less at candle 24 than was really there.
A find is drawn from where it became knowable, not from where it happened. A swing high needs candles to its right to be one; before they closed, nobody could trade it. A zone or level that is still valid is drawn up to the current candle (the as-of bar, or the live one), not into the empty space to its right.
On a Surface the as-of time is shared: rewind one of two charts side by side and you mean both. It is the third shared time beside zoom range and crosshair.
Messages
When the selection cannot be computed as it stands, the strip says so in amber:
| Message | What it means |
|---|---|
| … needs "…", which no concept produces — it is not computed | A building block is missing in this version. The concept and anything that needed it sit out; the rest is computed |
| Unknown concept "…" | Left over from an older setting — untick it |
| … wait for each other, so none of them is computed | Two concepts need each other’s finds. They and what depends on them sit out; everything else is computed |
| … want different values for … — computed with … | Two active concepts need the same building block with different numbers. Its defaults ran; the message names the control and each concept’s value, and the dimmed controls on both rows show what ran. To set those numbers yourself, use the same value on both rows or switch that block on as well |
| … come from …, which is switched on itself (grey) | You switched on a building block another concept reads. Its own row decides the shared settings; the named controls on the dependent row are read-only and show that row’s values. This is how it is meant to work — the line only tells you which row to adjust |
| …: … 12 → 10 (limited) — the stored value is outside what the rule can run with (grey) | A stored setting lies outside its control's range, or below zero for a size. The concept ran with the limited value, which the control shows with the same word next to it; the stored value is named underneath. Move the control once to replace it |
| … failed | A concept hit an internal error while computing. Nothing is drawn then — no picture is better than one with a building block silently missing. Switch off … right in the message removes the concept from the selection (for a computed-along building block, the concepts that need it), and the rest compute again |
| The candle data is broken | The candles in the chart are not a series an exchange would deliver — a close outside its own range, say, or a duplicate time. Nothing is computed; the message names the candle and the field. Reloading the symbol or interval usually helps |
The concepts
- Structure & Movement: Trend structure, Swing break, Direction change, Impulse candle
- Gaps & Inefficiencies: Price gap, Flipped gap, Two-way gap
- Zones: Impulse zone, Broken impulse zone, Held zone, Wick zone
- Liquidity: Liquidity pool, Level pierce
- PD Arrays & Ranges: Swing range, Range halves, Range midpoint, Optimal retracement zone, Golden retracement zone
- Models & Setups: Zone overlap
What the picture does not say
A drawn find is an observation about past candles. It is not a forecast, not a buy or sell recommendation, and no indication that a zone will “hold”. Market data comes straight from the exchange; we cannot vouch for its accuracy or completeness.
Categories, open/closed sections, search, school filters, badges and custom colors only organize or paint the panel and chart. They do not change calculations or the market-data path, and they do not affect orders, payments or user content. Colors are ordinary workspace preferences, so this presentation has no additional legal impact.
See also Chart.