Institutional candles
The three candles that mark where institutions acted: the stop-run candle, the buy-before-you-sell candle, and the imbalance.
Three footprints
Institutions leave three kinds of footprint on the chart. The stop-run candle, the buy-before-you-sell or sell-before-you-buy candle, and the imbalance. Each one is a place price tends to come back to.
The stop-run candle
The first is the stop-run candle, known in smart-money slang as the FU candle, which is how the charts label it. It is a complete stop hunt: one candle that sweeps the liquidity of all the retail orders above a resistance or below a support, then reverses.
The market always comes back to the open of the stop-run candle's body. That open is where the short positions go.
The buy-before-you-sell candle
The second is the candle where the institution hedges before taking its real position: a buy before a sell, or a sell before a buy. Look for the last buy candle before the sell took place, and the last sell candle before the buy.
The imbalance
The third is the imbalance, an area of inefficiency where trading was unequal: far more buyers than sellers or the reverse, so that price crossed the area in one move. The Imbalance lesson covers how it fills.
Find yours
Click any one of these candles on the Trade Desk and step forward: the replay shows whether price came back to it, and whether your entry was waiting there or chasing the move that left it.
the Trade Desk
Watch it inside your own account
Lessons open in the app with your progress saved and each one linked to the page it teaches.
Start free