Reading the market with the terminal 3 / 12
Reading the market with the terminal · With the terminalLesson 3 of 12

"Zones on the terminal's chart: gaps, order blocks and OTE"

Boxes on a chart look like answers. The terminal's boxes have exact rules — when a gap counts, when an order block is kept, when a box turns grey or flips colour. Knowing the rules tells you what a box is evidence of, and what it is not.

You will learn
  • The rules behind the FVG, iFVG, OB and OTE boxes
  • What fresh, mitigated, tested and inverted mean
  • Why being inside a zone is not a reason to enter

Before you start: The Smart Money Concepts lessons on order blocks and fair value gaps help.

Four kinds of box

A fair value gap is the space between the first and third of three candles that do not overlap, left by a large middle candle; the terminal counts it from 0.3 ATR tall. An order block is the last opposite candle before a move that broke structure, kept only when that move was an impulse. The OTE band is the 0.618–0.786 retracement of the dealing range, drawn with the Fibonacci layer. Each box changes as price comes back to it.

Zones: gaps, order blocks, OTE — the modelled week from Wednesday to Thursday: a bearish gap left by the candle that breaks the lows; price coming back into it (mitigated); an order block after the break of structure down, fresh and then tested; a bullish gap in the rally; the bearish gap closed through and turned into an iFVG, with a new bullish order block beside it; and a long taken inside the zones, where the first target is closer than the stop.

What the boxes are evidence of

A gap shows that price moved fast through a range; an order block shows where the move that broke structure started. Many traders expect price to revisit both, and many place orders there — which is why reactions there are common, and why they fail often too. The colour flips with the structure: a bearish gap that price closes above becomes an iFVG, watched as support; an order block closed through is dropped.

The last step shows the trap. Inside a zone there is no room: the stop has to go beyond the zone and the target is the next level, often close. A zone is a place to wait for — a reaction, a change in the order flow — not a reason to buy on arrival.

Takeaways
  1. FVG: three candles that leave a gap of at least 0.3 ATR, the middle one large and mostly body.
  2. OB: the last opposite candle before an impulsive structure break; fresh, then tested, dropped when broken.
  3. A gap closed through flips: iFVG, kept for 30 candles.
  4. A zone marks where to look and where a stop can hide; it does not mark a trade.

Open BTC in the terminal with the Levels and SMC layers on and find the nearest boxes

Further reading

Education only, not financial advice · Updated 28 Oct 2026 · Data: Binance · Report a mistake