Acceptance versus rejection
A candle's body is settled auction: price the period agreed to hold. Its wicks are refused territory. A level drawn at a monthly candle's body edge marks where a month of business concluded; the same month's wick tip marks a moment of panic that lasted hours. Orders defending value cluster at the former; stop-hunts feed on the latter, which is why body levels survive the spike-through games that shred wick levels.
The lifecycle rule
Body levels come with a matching integrity rule: they break on closes, not touches. A wick through a body level is a test survived, often a sweep in the making; the level retires only when a candle's close traverses it, acceptance beyond acceptance. This close-through standard keeps the map stable through gold's noisiest weeks, and it is exactly how the body-level tool on our chart manages its lines.
Using the two schools together
The productive pairing: body levels define the value skeleton, the levels worth planning around; wick extremes define the liquidity shelf beyond them, where stops pool and raids aim. A raid through the wick level into the body level that then holds is one of gold's most repeatable sequences, the two schools describing one event from both sides.
FAQ
Which is better, wick levels or body levels?
Different jobs: bodies for stable value reference, wicks for liquidity mapping. The combination reads events neither catches alone.
When does a body level stop being valid?
When a same-timeframe candle closes through the full body range, acceptance beyond it. Wick penetration alone leaves it standing.
Do body levels work on all timeframes?
The logic is uniform; the weight is not. Monthly and weekly body edges carry structural significance that intraday bodies cannot.
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