// the marks
How to mark support and resistance levels that matter
Short answer: Start on the weekly chart, mark the price areas where the market has turned more than once, draw them as zones rather than thin lines, and delete any level price has ignored. Fewer, older levels beat many fresh ones.
Every old market town had places where trade gathered: the corn exchange, the crossroads, the bridge where carts slowed down. Price behaves the same way. It remembers where buyers and sellers met before, and it tends to slow down when it comes back. Support and resistance is nothing more than a map of those meeting places.
This is the method behind the marks filed in the AnonMav chart journal. It is educational, not a system, and it will not tell you what to do. It will help you see.
1. Begin with the largest frame
Open the weekly chart first. The levels that matter on the weekly were built by the most money over the longest time, and they tend to outrank anything drawn on a five minute chart. Mark only the obvious ones, the shelves your eye lands on without effort. If you have to squint to find a level, it is not a level.
2. Zones, not lines
Price is not a draughtsman. It rarely turns on the exact penny. Draw each level as a band covering the wicks and the bodies around the turn. A thin line invites the mind to believe in precision that does not exist, and that false belief is expensive.
3. Count the touches, then weigh them
A level touched three times means more than a level touched once. A level where price turned sharply, on heavy volume, means more than one where it drifted. Old resistance that breaks and later holds as support, the classic role reversal, is one of the oldest patterns in the book and still one of the most honest.
4. Step down a frame and prune
Move to the daily. Keep the weekly zones. Add daily levels only where they sit close to price and have been respected recently. Then prune. Most charts drown in lines. Two or three zones above price and two or three below is plenty. Everything else is decoration.
5. Check your work against a second eye
Once you have drawn your own, compare them with something independent: a colleague, an old chart, or software that finds pivots automatically. We use TrendSpider's automated trendlines for this, described in how we chart. Agreement raises confidence. Disagreement is a reason to look again, not a reason to obey the machine.
6. Write it down before price arrives
A level drawn after the fact proves nothing. Screenshot your marks at the start of the week and file them, with the date, in a journal. When price reaches a zone, record what it did. Over a few months you will learn which kinds of levels your eye draws well and which it invents. The free trading journal template has the columns for this.
A weekly routine
- Sunday: weekly chart, mark the zones, delete dead ones.
- Monday morning before the bell: daily chart, note the nearest zone above and below.
- During the week: let alerts do the watching.
- Friday after the close: screenshot, file, and grade each zone. Held, broke, or ignored.
Patience is the whole trade. The market pays the observer more often than the busybody. The open playbook and the indicators page cover the wider kit; the journal shows the marks in the wild.
Questions asked at the counter
Which timeframe is best for support and resistance?
Start on the weekly, refine on the daily. Lower timeframes add noise unless they agree with the larger levels.
How many levels should a chart have?
Usually two or three zones above price and two or three below. More than that hides the ones that matter.
Do support and resistance levels always hold?
No. They are places where price is more likely to react, not walls. Record what happens and let the record teach you.
Educational content only. Not financial advice. Markets carry risk; nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell anything.