Smart Ranges
Native chart painter for Order Blocks, Fair Value Gaps and Breakers — plus optional pullback, FVG-touch, predictive and reversal BUY / SELL signal triggers.
Smart Ranges paints the structural levels institutional desks build their entries around — Order Blocks (the last opposing candle before an impulse), Fair Value Gaps (three-bar imbalances), and Breakers (OBs that flipped role after being mitigated). On top of those zones it can also fire four families of BUY / SELL signal markers — pullback into a breaker, second touch of a matured FVG, predictive breakout, and smart reversal — so the chart shows you both the zones price tends to react at AND the moment a tradeable reaction is confirmed.
Settings reference
The dialog stacks five sections. Booleans render as TradingView-style checkboxes; the value rows below them control how many zones you keep on screen and which mitigation rule decides "broken".
| Section | Setting | Default | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| General | Text Size | Sm | Tiny / Sm / Md / Lg / Auto — affects metrics, FVG labels, signal text, and the backtest table. |
| OB · Order Blocks | Show order blocks | On | Master toggle for both bullish (green) and bearish (red) OB rectangles. |
| Show breakers | Off | Keep mitigated OBs on the chart as dashed outlines so you can still read flipped support / resistance. | |
| Show metrics | On | Volume number and percent-of-total annotation to the right of each OB. | |
| Show activity | Off | Mini horizontal buy / sell bars inside each OB showing the aggressor split during formation. | |
| Last | 4 | How many of the most recent OBs (per side) stay drawn. Higher = more context, more clutter. | |
| Mitigation | Close | When an OB becomes a Breaker — Close (close pierces the OB), Wick (wick pierces), Avg (price crosses the OB midline). | |
| FVG · Fair Value Gap | Show fair value gaps | On | Master toggle for FVG rectangles. |
| Theme | B/B | Colour scheme — Chart (single tint), B/B (bull green / bear red), Mono (neutral grey). | |
| Mitigation | Wick | When an FVG is considered filled — Wick (any wick into the gap) or Close (close inside the gap). | |
| SIG · Signals (Ultimate plan tier) | Order Block signals | Off | Pullback BUY / SELL triangles when price retests a breaker OB under an RSI cool-off. |
| Predictive signals | On | Filled circles when price breaks a recent triple-pivot high / low with trend confirmation. | |
| FVG signals | On | Arrow markers on the second touch of a matured FVG. | |
| Smart reversal | On | Diamond markers when a momentum divergence completes with a low-timeframe structure break. | |
| STATS · Backtest | Filter | Off | What rows the on-chart stats panel shows — Off / All / OB / FVG / Predict / Rev. |
| Pos | TR | Anchor corner for the stats panel — TR, BR, BL. |
The four signal toggles unlock on the Ultimate plan tier — on lower tiers the section shows a PRO badge and the checkboxes stay locked. The zone painters (OB / FVG / Breakers / metrics / activity) and the backtest panel are available on every paid tier.
What it draws
Smart Ranges layers several distinct concepts on the same chart. Reading the indicator well starts with knowing what each shape means.
Order Block (OB) — the last opposing candle before a strong impulse. A bullish OB is the down-candle right before price ripped higher; a bearish OB is the up-candle right before price collapsed. Institutional desks rarely fill an entire position in one print — the OB marks the level they had to walk back to in order to fill, which is why price keeps returning to test it.
Fair Value Gap (FVG) — sometimes called an Imbalance. A three-bar pattern where the middle bar moves so aggressively that bar 1's wick and bar 3's wick don't overlap. The empty space between them is "unfair value" — one side of the book paid through without giving the other side a chance to trade. Markets tend to return to fill these gaps, which is why FVGs work as both targets and retest zones.
Breaker — an OB that was mitigated (price pierced it according to the chosen rule) and therefore "broken". A broken bullish OB flips to act as resistance; a broken bearish OB flips to act as support. The dashed outline of a Breaker on the chart is exactly that role-flip you'd hand-draw.
Mitigation — the moment price returns to the zone in a way that counts as "tested". Smart Ranges lets you pick the strictness: a piercing close, a piercing wick, or a cross of the zone midline. Tighter rules keep more zones live; looser rules retire them faster.
| Shape on chart | What it is | What it means for trading |
|---|---|---|
| Solid green box | Bullish Order Block | Demand zone — bids that hadn't filled yet. Watch for buy reaction on retest. |
| Solid red box | Bearish Order Block | Supply zone — offers that hadn't filled yet. Watch for sell reaction on retest. |
| Dashed green outline | Bullish Breaker | Former demand that broke down — now likely resistance on retest. |
| Dashed red outline | Bearish Breaker | Former supply that broke up — now likely support on retest. |
| Green FVG band | Bullish imbalance | Buyers paid through; price tends to return and at least tag the lower edge. |
| Red FVG band | Bearish imbalance | Sellers paid through; expect retracement back into the band. |
| Inner horizontal bars | OB Activity | Per-zone buy / sell aggressor split during the candle that built the OB. |
| Volume label right of box | OB Metrics | Volume traded inside the zone and its share of total OB volume. |
When Signals is enabled (Ultimate tier), four additional marker families paint on top of the zones:
| Marker | Family | What fired it |
|---|---|---|
| ▲ BUY / ▼ SELL triangle | Order Block | Price pulled back into a breaker OB while RSI cooled through its support / resistance band — the classic mitigation retest. |
| • BUY / • SELL arrow | FVG | A matured FVG was touched for the second time — first touch is just a tag, second touch is the trade. |
| ● BUY / ● SELL circle | Predictive | Price closed beyond a confirmed pivot-high or pivot-low cluster, with a longer-term trend filter in agreement. |
| ◈ BUY / ◈ SELL diamond | Smart Reversal | A momentum divergence printed, then a low-timeframe swing-high / swing-low broke in the direction of the divergence. |
Each signal carries an entry, a stop (anchored to the structure that set it up), and one to three take-profit targets. With the Backtest filter on, a corner table tallies wins / losses / win-rate / net-% per family across the loaded history — useful for sanity-checking which families are working on the symbol you're trading.
How to read it
- Active bullish OB at price — first reaction. If the candle pierces and rejects with a long lower wick on rising volume, the zone held; if it closes through, expect the OB to flip to a Breaker on the next bar.
- Stacked OB + FVG at the same level — strongest confluence. The FVG names a price tract that wants to be retraced; the OB inside it names the bid / offer pocket that should defend the retracement.
- A Breaker keeps holding on retest — the structural change is real. Trade in the direction of the break, treating the broken zone as the new pivot. Pair with a pullback trigger or EMA bias to keep the directional read clean.
- OB Activity is one-sided — the candle that built the zone was dominated by one aggressor. A bullish OB with 80% buy volume is a stronger demand zone than the same shape at 55% — the desk that built it was confident.
- Predictive signal opposite an active OB — the breakout is fighting against unfilled liquidity. Treat as fragile. Wait for the OB to be cleanly mitigated before trusting the trend leg.
- Smart reversal diamond near a fresh swing — the highest-quality counter-trend setup the indicator produces. The divergence sets up the what, the structure break confirms the when. Pair with the CVD read on the same bar to filter out reversals without order-flow exhaustion behind them.
- Backtest panel reading 0/0 — the family is either disabled or hasn't fired on the loaded range. Extend history or enable the matching family checkbox.
Common pitfalls
- Reading every box as tradeable — Smart Ranges paints structural zones, not entry signals. A bullish OB at price is interesting, not an entry. The signal markers exist precisely so you have a trigger rule on top of the zone — without one you'll fade every bounce until one of them keeps going.
- Leaving "Last" set too high on dense charts — bumping Last from 4 to 10 doubles the wall of boxes on screen, and the older zones get retested less often because newer structure has already invalidated them. Stay at the default until you have a reason to widen the lookback.
- Mismatching the mitigation rule with your trading style — scalpers reading wicks want Wick mitigation (zones retire fast, only the truest defences stay live). Swing traders reading closes want Close (a wick poke isn't a break). Mixing them across timeframes creates the "the zone broke!" / "no it didn't!" disagreement traders get with themselves.
- Trusting an OB signal during ranging RSI — the OB BUY / SELL trigger needs the momentum oscillator to cool through its support / resistance band. Inside a tight range RSI bounces inside that band constantly, producing signals on every retest. Move up a timeframe or wait for a directional bias before trading them.
- Reading FVGs in dead tape — the FVG detector requires a strong middle-bar displacement to confirm an imbalance. On low-volatility periods almost no FVGs print, which is correct. Don't lower the bar by switching mitigation to Close "to get more zones" — you'll just paint noise.
- Stacking the Smart Ranges TradingView study and the web-app version — they run the same logic on independent feeds and will paint near-identical (but not pixel-identical) zones. Pick whichever venue you trade from and turn the other one off.
What's next
- mrD Pullback — the pullback companion study; pair it with Smart Ranges to filter zone retests through a pullback trigger.
- EMA — the bias filter most traders run alongside OB / FVG setups so they only take longs above the mean and shorts below it.
- CVD — confirm reversal-family signals with order-flow exhaustion at the same bar.
- Large Trades — the per-print view of what actually changed hands inside an OB or FVG retest.
- Smart Ranges TradingView study — the canonical settings + trading reference if you also publish on TV.