Support & Resistance Zones

The market's invisible floors and ceilings

Support is a price level (or zone) where buying pressure has historically been strong enough to stop a decline and push price back up. Resistance is the mirror image — a level where selling pressure has historically stopped an advance and pushed price back down. These levels form because traders remember price reacting there before, and place orders accordingly.

Zones, not exact lines — and roles can flip

In practice, support/resistance are rarely a single exact price; they're better thought of as zones, since price often reacts slightly above or below the "textbook" level. Critically, once resistance is decisively broken, it often becomes new support (and vice versa for broken support becoming new resistance) — this is called a role reversal.

• •The more times a level has been tested and held, the more significant traders generally consider it.
• •A "breakout" is price decisively closing through a support/resistance level, often on higher volume.
• •A "false breakout" (or "fakeout") is when price briefly breaks a level then quickly reverses back — a common trap.