# Support and resistance > Support and resistance are price levels where falling price has tended to stop and rising price has tended to stall. - Canonical: https://hadalinstruments.com/glossary/support-and-resistance/ - Term set: https://hadalinstruments.com/glossary/ --- Support and resistance name the two sides of a chart's turning points: a floor where falling price has turned before, and a ceiling where rising price has stalled. Both are marked from past turns, so every level is first a record of what price did, and only by inference a claim about what it will do. The measurable question is whether a level remembers what happened there. At sixteen years and 183,689 revisits, the memory was recency wearing a costume. [The level that remembered nothing](/research/the-level-that-remembered-nothing/) is the post-mortem: splitting each level's history in two and correlating the halves produced exactly the signal durable memory would produce, and short-range trend produces the same signal, because the two halves of any split share a boundary. The popular corollary, that a level grows stronger each time it holds, was measured in the same walk. The weight of a prior reaction on the next one fell away with distance in time until it could not be told from zero, so the predictive weight sat with the latest touch. The belief that a level is loaded because price remembers what happened there sits on the [refutation index](/refutations/#claim-2d76a6d7) as unproven. Round numbers are a common choice of level, and [Do round numbers matter in forex?](/research/do-round-numbers-matter-in-forex/) measured them. An effect found on one thirteen-month window scattered around zero when the identical test ran across twelve windows of the same history, some pointing the other way. The claim that everyone watches them, so they matter, is on the [refutation index](/refutations/#claim-eedadc78) as unproven. What survives is sequential: what a level did on its most recent visit carries real information about the next, a property of price series in general rather than of any one level. A support or resistance line cannot promise a turn. It records where price turned; this entry states no hold rate and no touch count that validates a level, and the level study's result holds for the one pair it measured and says nothing about any other. ## Commonly confused with Neighbouring concepts that get used interchangeably, and the distinction that actually separates them. - **[Supply and demand zones](https://hadalinstruments.com/glossary/supply-and-demand-zones/)** — Support and resistance are levels read from where price turned. A supply or demand zone is an area drawn around the base of a strong move and read as the trace of an imbalance, so it carries a height and a story that a level does not. - **Round numbers** — A round number is a claim about where a level sits on the price scale. Support and resistance are read from where price has actually turned. The round-number note found an effect from one window scattering around zero when the same test ran across twelve windows. - **[PD array](https://hadalinstruments.com/glossary/pd-array/)** — A PD array is ICT's family of reference zones, sorted by which half of the dealing range each sits in. Support and resistance make no claim about the dealing range's halves, only about where price turned before. ## How to measure it in your own data A definition you cannot test is a definition you have to take on trust. This is the shortest honest route from the concept to a number you computed yourself. - **Records you need** — Every revisit of price to the levels you trade, each with its outcome, held or broken, and how long it had been since the level's previous visit. - **What you compute** — Split the revisits by their distance in time from the last visit, and ask whether a level's older history predicts the next outcome once its most recent visit is already known. - **What the answer tells you** — Older history that improves the prediction beyond the latest visit is memory. Older history that leaves it where the latest visit put it is recency, which is what the sixteen-year walk found: the weight of a prior reaction faded with distance in time until it could not be told from zero. ## Questions and answers ### What is support and resistance in trading? A pair of chart readings: support is a level where falling price has turned before, resistance a level where rising price has stalled. Both are marked from past turns, so each is first a record of what price did and only by inference a claim about what it will do. ### Is there a support and resistance indicator? Any tool that draws levels automatically applies a rule to past highs and lows, and the rule decides which turns count. The level it draws is still a record of past turns, and whether it carries memory is the same question the level study measured. ### Does support and resistance work on gold? The site's level study was run on a single currency pair and states nothing about gold or any other instrument. The method carries over: split a level's revisits by distance in time and ask whether its older history adds to its most recent visit. ## Related terms Derived from the links this entry makes and the entries that link back to it. - [Price action](https://hadalinstruments.com/glossary/price-action/) Price action is the reading of a chart from price itself — highs, lows, closes and their patterns — without indicators derived from it. ## Cite This Definition APA BibTeX HTML Hadal Instruments. (2026). Support and resistance. Hadal Glossary. https://hadalinstruments.com/glossary/support-and-resistance/ Version dbd9b80, 2026-09-23. @misc{hadal_2026_support-and-resistance, author = {Hadal Instruments}, title = {Support and resistance}, year = {2026}, url = {https://hadalinstruments.com/glossary/support-and-resistance/}, howpublished = {Hadal Glossary}, version = {dbd9b80}, note = {Pre-launch publication; version dated 2026-09-23} } Source: Hadal Instruments, Support and resistance. Original Research Copy Citation **Version dbd9b80** identifies the commit that last changed this page in Hadal's content repository. That repository is not public, so the identifier does not resolve externally — it is published so a citation pins one specific state rather than a moving page. To obtain the exact version cited, use the [press and research route](https://hadalinstruments.com/press/).