Wick Pressure Zones

Introduction

Wicks are the market’s fingerprints. A tall upper wick often tells you that buyers pushed into higher prices but were absorbed by aggressive sellers; a tall lower wick suggests the inverse—absorption by buyers at lower prices. The challenge is separating meaningful pressure from incidental noise and doing so consistently across instruments and timeframes.

Wick Pressure Zones (by Bigbeluga) solves this by transforming unusually large wicks into objective supply/demand areas. It normalizes each wick against the largest wick observed in a rolling window, applies a simple RSI regime filter for context, and then draws and extends those zones forward until price fully clears them. The result is a clean, rules‑based map of where pressure concentrated—and how the market later reacts on retests or breaks.

How it works

1) From wick to score

Each candle is decomposed into body and wicks: bodyTop = max(open, close) and bodyBot = min(open, close). Upper and lower wick lengths are measured relative to price to avoid unit bias and protected against division by zero with a small epsilon. Over the last lookback bars, the script tracks the maximum observed relative wick on each side. Every new wick is then scaled from 0 to 100 by dividing by that maximum and applying floor().

Why normalize? A 20‑tick wick on an index future may be huge on a 1‑minute chart and trivial on a daily chart. Normalization turns raw points into a comparable signal across contexts.

2) Birth conditions for a zone

A zone is created only when pressure is decisive and directional:

• For an upper (supply) zone, the upper‑wick score must be ≥ threshold, the lower side must not also exceed the threshold (to avoid ambiguous two‑sided spikes), and RSI[rsiLen] > 50 to confirm upward pressure where sellers stepped in.
• For a lower (demand) zone, the mirror logic applies with RSI[rsiLen] < 50.
• extendBars enforces a minimum spacing between zone births to prevent clustering.

At creation, the indicator stores each zone’s side, left/right anchors, top/bot prices, a broken flag, and the volume seen on the birth candle. To keep charts readable, only the most recent maxLevels zones are retained (oldest are shifted out).

3) Extension and invalidation

Active zones extend their right edge to the latest bar as the market trades. A zone flips to broken only when price fully clears it:

• An upper zone is cleared if a later bar has low > top (the entire candle prints above the zone top).
• A lower zone is cleared if a later bar has high < bot (the entire candle prints below the zone bottom).

This strict definition filters mere wick pokes. On the chart, active zones are drawn as shaded rectangles with a gradient that intensifies toward the current edge, while broken zones retain a colored left anchor (red for upper, green for lower) and a grey baseline marking the final extent.

4) Efficient rendering

The script uses DEFPARAM DrawOnLastBarOnly = true and updates drawings inside islastbarupdate, which significantly reduces overhead on lower timeframes and keeps scrolling smooth.

Reading the chart

Think of each zone as a memory of absorption:

• Upper (red) active zone: sellers previously overwhelmed buyers in that price band. The first retest often meets renewed supply; if price clears above and marks the zone as broken, that prior supply has been consumed and continuation is common.
• Lower (green) active zone: buyers previously absorbed supply. First retests may bounce; a full clear below signals that demand failed and momentum can shift lower.

Broken zones aren’t useless—on the contrary, they often become context for follow‑through. A market that conclusively clears a known obstacle tends to explore the next area of interest.

Practical playbooks (illustrative, not financial advice)

1) First‑retest fade
After a zone forms, wait for the first return into it. Enter with the zone, manage risk just beyond the opposite boundary of the box, and aim for a conservative target (e.g., prior swing or midpoint of the move that birthed the zone). Works best when the original wick scored near 100 and RSI still aligns with the bias.

2) Break‑and‑go
If price fully clears an active zone and marks it broken, look for a minor pullback that respects the cleared boundary from the other side. Enter with the break direction; risk goes just inside the old zone.

3) Confluence stacking
Prioritize zones that overlap with session ranges, round numbers, or recent swing structure, plus RSI in agreement. Confluence won’t turn a bad zone into a good one, but it will improve your average outcome.

Tip: On especially volatile instruments, increase threshold and/or lookback to spare yourself from marginal zones.

Parameters and tuning

The defaults are balanced for many liquid markets. Adjust as follows:

Full Code ProRealTime

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