Before I look at a single candle, I mark three levels.
Every session. Every pair. Doesn't matter.
These three levels tell me where institutions need price to go, where the trap is getting set, and where I'm entering after it fires.
Most traders open their charts and start drawing.
Trendlines. Fibs. Support. Resistance.
They're decorating.
I'm marking targets.
Here's the difference.
Level 1: Previous Session High And Low
This is where the hunt starts.
Every session leaves behind a high and a low. And sitting just above that high and just below that low is a cluster of stops from every trader who entered during that session.
Institutions know this.
They don't guess where the stops are. They don't need to. Retail traders place them in the same spots every single time because every course and every YouTube video teaches the same risk management rules.
"Put your stop below the previous low."
Congratulations. You just joined the cluster.
Before the real move happens, price pushes through that session high or low. Not randomly. Deliberately. It needs that liquidity to fill institutional orders on the other side.
That fake breakout you keep seeing? It's not fake. It's a collection event.
Mark the previous session high. Mark the previous session low. Those are your first two lines. The levels where the trap gets set.
Level 2: Nearest Untouched Equal Highs Or Lows On The 4H
This is your directional bias.
Zoom out to the 4H. Find the equal highs or equal lows that haven't been touched yet. The ones sitting there with a pool of liquidity above or below them that institutions haven't collected.
That's where price is going. Not maybe. Structurally.
Institutions need to fill large positions. They need counterparties. The biggest concentration of available counterparties sits at those obvious untouched levels where retail traders have stacked their stops.
When you see equal highs on the 4H with a clean pool of liquidity above them, your bias is bullish. Price needs to get up there to collect.
When you see equal lows with untouched liquidity below, your bias is bearish.
This isn't prediction. It's reading where the unfilled orders are and understanding that price is a delivery mechanism, not a random walk.
Your bias isn't "maybe it'll break higher."
Your bias is "price needs to sweep that level before any real directional move happens."
Level 3: The Last Clean Fair Value Gap
This is your entry.
After the sweep of your session high/low completes and price reverses, it moves fast. Institutions are filling their real position now. That aggressive move in the opposite direction creates an imbalance on the chart, a Fair Value Gap.
That FVG is where institutions filled. And price tends to retrace back into it before continuing.
That's your entry point. Not during the sweep when retail is getting stopped out. Not chasing the reversal after it's already moved 80 pips. On the retrace into the inefficiency they just created.
Stop goes at the sweep level. If price comes back there, the thesis was wrong.
Target goes to the next liquidity pool. Or 3:1 minimum.
The math is simple.
Putting It Together
Before London opens tomorrow, do this:
Mark Friday's session high and session low.
Pull up the 4H. Find the nearest equal highs or equal lows that haven't been swept.
Note the last clean FVG between price and those levels.
That's your map.
Session high/low tells you where the trap fires. The 4H equal highs/lows tells you which direction. The FVG tells you where to enter after the trap completes.
Three levels. That's the entire pre-session process.
I used to do this manually. Draw boxes around every cluster. Mark every FVG by hand. Took me an hour every morning before London open.
FluxCharts does this automatically. Plots institutional bias, identifies liquidity pools in real-time, and marks the inefficiencies as they form. Same logic I use, just without the manual work.
Not required. But it handles what used to take me an hour of analysis every morning.
The Part Most People Miss
You can mark all three levels perfectly and still lose money.
Because knowing WHERE to trade and actually executing it under pressure are completely different skills.
When price sweeps your session low and every instinct screams "it's breaking down, get out", that's the exact moment you need to be positioning for the reversal.
When the FVG forms and your entry is sitting right there but price is moving fast and your heart rate doubles, that's where most traders hesitate and miss it entirely.
When you're in the trade and drawdown hits 20 pips before the move starts, that's when most traders close early and watch it run 150 pips without them.
The levels are the easy part.
The execution framework, when exactly to enter, how to manage the drawdown, how to hold through the noise knowing the institutional mechanics behind why this works, that's what separates the traders who understand this from the traders who take profit.
It covers how I actually trade these three levels in real-time. Not theory. Execution.
Talk soon,
Atif
