The asymmetry built into the display
Today Levels marks the zones for the current day and keeps them on the chart at all times. Stop loss and target lines behave completely differently. They are drawn only once a trade is actually ACTIVE, never before. A zone that has not been triggered carries no stop and no targets on the chart at any point, in any state, until that changes.
That is an unusual design decision and it is worth understanding before you judge the tool incomplete. If levels are drawn in advance, every zone on the chart looks like a live trade in waiting, and later, when you review the session, your memory will quietly promote the ones that worked. Removing the lines until a trade exists makes the chart a worse marketing image and a much better record. You cannot read a result into a zone that was never triggered, because there is nothing drawn there to read.
The states in order
The labels describe a progression, and knowing what each one means removes most of the confusion.
- NOT ACTIVE: the zone exists and nothing has happened in it.
- IN ZONE and NOT ACTIVE: price is trading inside the area, but no trade has been triggered.
- CONFIRMED and NOT ACTIVE: the engine has registered its confirmation condition, and there is still no trade.
- ACTIVE: a trade is live, and only now do stop and target lines appear.
- TP1 HIT, TP2 HIT, TP3 HIT: a target has been reached.
- STOPPED: the stop level was reached.
- DONE: the zone is finished and will not produce anything further.
Notice how many of these contain the words NOT ACTIVE. Three separate states exist in which something has happened and no trade has resulted. That is deliberate and it carries the main message of the tool: activity inside a zone is not the same thing as a trade.
Why IN ZONE is not an entry
IN ZONE and NOT ACTIVE is the state people act on when they should not. Price is inside an area you were waiting for, the chart looks like the moment has arrived, and it is easy to treat arrival as permission. Arrival is simply arrival. Price trades into zones constantly, including zones it is about to pass straight through on its way somewhere else.
CONFIRMED and NOT ACTIVE is subtler and more interesting. Something has been registered, a condition the engine was waiting for, and a trade still has not come into existence. The sequence can also end there. A day can finish with a zone that reached confirmation and never became active at all, and nothing has gone wrong when that happens. The gap between these two states is where most undisciplined entries live, because the display is showing progress and the natural instinct is to read progress as momentum towards a result.
What appears when a trade goes active
Once the state changes to ACTIVE, the display changes with it. The stop level and the targets are drawn, and the zone now carries the full picture of a live position. From that point the labels report outcomes rather than conditions: a target being reached, or the stop being reached.
There is a useful side effect for review work. Because the lines exist only for trades that genuinely went active, the chart at the end of a session is a record of what actually happened rather than a gallery of what might have. That is exactly the material a journal needs, and it removes the most common source of inflated self assessment, which is counting unentered ideas as wins. If you keep a structured trading journal, a display with this property is far easier to log honestly, because the question of whether a trade existed is already settled by the chart instead of by your recollection.
DONE, and why a finished zone stays visible
DONE marks a zone that is over. It has produced whatever it was going to produce, or the day has moved past it, and nothing further will come from that area. The label is a closing statement rather than an outcome.
Leaving finished zones labelled rather than deleting them has a practical use. Over a session you can see where the day actually transacted, which areas were visited and ignored, and which were never approached. That is a map of the day as it happened, and it is more informative than a chart that only shows what is still pending. It also makes a particular mistake visible: repeatedly waiting for areas that keep finishing without producing anything. If most of your zones reach DONE untouched, the issue is probably not the zones. It is that your attention is on the wrong side of the day, which is a bias problem rather than an execution one, and working out the daily bias first addresses it more directly than any entry refinement will.
What the labels refuse to say
The states are factual and they are narrow. A state tells you what has happened. It does not tell you what is likely to happen next, it does not express a confidence level, and it does not rank one zone above another. There is no probability attached to CONFIRMED, and ACTIVE does not mean a good trade, only a live one.
Position size is likewise absent, and that is correct. Size is a function of your account, your risk per trade and the distance to your invalidation point, none of which a zone engine knows. The question of how far away a stop belongs, and what that implies for targets, is its own discipline and worth reading separately in how stop and target placement is reasoned about. A display that reported probability or suggested size would be making claims it cannot support, and the absence of those numbers is a feature of this tool rather than a gap in it.
Reading it through a session
A straightforward routine. Before the session, look at which zones exist and on which side of price they sit, and form your own view of the day independently of them. During the session, treat IN ZONE as information and nothing more. When a state reaches CONFIRMED, your decision is whether the context around it still agrees with what you decided earlier, not whether the label looks encouraging.
The zones themselves are on the chart continuously, so this works on the live gold chart without any setup beyond switching the tool on from the toolbar menus. Afterwards, the useful question is rarely whether a zone worked. It is whether the trades that went ACTIVE were the ones you had actually planned to take, since the difference between those two sets is where most of a trader's results are decided. One well chosen trade handled properly beats a day of reacting to labels, a point developed in the case for a single good trade.
Where it can mislead
Three honest limitations. The zones are the day's zones, so they carry no weekly context, and a perfectly valid daily area can sit directly against a larger structure that is more important than it is. The tool will not tell you that, because it is not looking at the week.
Second, states are mechanical. A zone can register confirmation during conditions no sensible trader would trade, and the label will look identical to one that appears during an orderly session. The display has no concept of a market being too fast or too thin.
Third, and most insidious, the state machine is comfortable. Watching a progression gives a feeling of participation and of information arriving, which can hold your attention on a chart all day without a single decision ever becoming worth making. A day that ends with every zone at NOT ACTIVE or DONE and no trade taken is a normal outcome and often the correct one. The tool is a record keeper, not a reason to act.
FAQ
Why are there no stop or target lines on my zones?
Because those lines are drawn only once a trade is genuinely active. A zone that has not triggered shows no stop and no targets by design, so a pending idea can never look like a live position on the chart or in a later review of the session.
What is the difference between IN ZONE and ACTIVE?
IN ZONE and NOT ACTIVE means price is trading inside the marked area with no trade triggered. ACTIVE means a trade is live, and only in that state do stop and target lines appear. Price visiting a zone is an event, not an entry.
Can a zone be confirmed and still never become active?
Yes, and it is a normal outcome. CONFIRMED and NOT ACTIVE is its own state, so a zone can register the confirmation condition and then finish the day without a trade ever existing. Nothing has malfunctioned when that happens, because the state records a condition being met rather than a position being opened.
What does DONE mean?
It marks a zone that is finished and will produce nothing further, either because it has run its course or because the day has moved past it. Finished zones stay labelled rather than disappearing, which leaves a usable map of where the session actually transacted.
Do the labels tell me how likely a zone is to work?
No. They report what has happened and nothing else. There is no probability behind CONFIRMED, no ranking between zones, and no suggested position size, because those would require information the tool does not have about your account, your risk and the wider market.
ⓘ See these ideas on real price: open the free XAUUSD live chart.