Buying climax
The buying climax is the up bar where demand exhausts itself into supply. The shape: the widest up spread of the rally, ultra high volume, and a close in the middle or lower part of the range. Often the next bar opens higher and closes down.
Bar 5 is the climax. Widest spread, largest volume, close well below the high. Retail buyers chased the breakout; someone with size sold them everything they wanted. Bar 6 tries to follow through, fails, and closes down. That pair is the classic top on gold, and it shows up on M15 almost every week during New York.
Upthrust
An upthrust is the buying climax's trap version, the twin of the shakeout. Price pushes above a visible high on high volume, and closes on or near its low, back inside the old range. The wick above the level is where breakout buyers were filled, and the close is where they found out.
Bar 5 spikes above 4,310, the range high, on the highest volume of the sequence and closes near its low. Structure traders know this as a sweep of buy side liquidity; the buy side and sell side liquidity article covers where those stops sit. VSA adds the confirmation: high volume with a low close means the spike was sold, not bought. An upthrust on low volume is a different animal, and usually just a quiet market wandering.
No demand
No demand is the mirror of no supply and the everyday form of weakness inside a downtrend. Up bar, narrow spread, volume lower than the previous two bars. Price rose because sellers paused, not because buyers arrived, and when sellers resume there is nothing under the market.
Bars 3 and 4 are the no demand bars, the lowest volume in the sequence. Bar 5 confirms with a wide down bar on rising volume. That is the complete sequence: weakness, test, confirmation, and it is what the short in part 10 is built on.
End of a rising market
One more shape worth knowing because gold produces it after long rallies. A wide up bar on ultra high volume that closes on its high, at the top of a mature move, looks like the strongest bar imaginable. Then the next two or three bars make no upward progress on falling volume. The strongest looking bar was the last of the demand. VSA calls it end of a rising market and it is the reason part 3 insisted on background: bar A from part 2 is bullish in a markup and terminal at the end of one.
Why tops are harder
Declines in gold end on fear and fear is loud: one huge bar, done. Rallies end on complacency and complacency is quiet: a buying climax, a range that drifts for a session, a second push that fails on lower volume, then the drop. Expect distribution to take longer than accumulation and expect more false tests. Part 8 draws the full shape.
Course navigation. Previous: Part 5, Tests and no supply. Course index: VSA course for gold. Next: Part 7, Spread and close.
FAQ
Is every high volume up bar a buying climax?
No. Inside a healthy markup, high volume up bars closing on their highs are simply demand. A climax needs three things at once: the widest spread of the move, the largest volume, and a close off the high. Two of three is a warning, not a climax.
How is an upthrust different from a breakout?
A breakout closes above the level on good volume and the next bar holds above it. An upthrust closes back below the level on the same bar. The close settles it, and on gold you often only know which it was at the bar close, which is why entering mid bar on a spike is a coin flip.
Can no demand happen inside an uptrend?
Yes, and it is one of the earliest warnings. A rally that continues on narrowing spreads and falling volume is running out of buyers even though price is still rising. It is not a short on its own, but it says the next dip may not find support.
What confirms weakness?
A down bar with a wide spread closing on its low on rising volume, after the climax or the no demand bar. Until that prints, the weakness is a hypothesis and price can still grind higher on thin air for longer than seems reasonable.
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