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Break and retest: two ways of working with a broken level
Two of the five feed kinds say “price is going THROUGH the level”: a break catches the approach to a level with a cascade behind it, a retest catches the return to an already broken one. Here are both, threshold by threshold.
A level is an obstacle. Price can bounce off it or go straight through, and then the obstacle changes sign: broken resistance becomes support. Two feed kinds live inside that scenario. “Level break” shows the moment price has come to a strong level and is about to decide its fate. “Level retest” is the moment after the decision: the level was broken by an impulse and price is coming back to it from the new side. Both are shown BEFORE the event, not after: the chart shows where the level is and which side price is on, and the decision stays with you.
Break: why not every level qualifies
It is worth breaking not any line, but one with room behind it. A level qualifies under one of two conditions: either a CASCADE stands behind it — several more unbroken levels of the same side, each within a few average bars of the previous one; or the level is already TESTED by two touches, counting the bar it was formed on. Plus a gate on the coin itself: hourly volatility from 3% by the 15-minute NATR and turnover from thirty million dollars a day. On a quiet coin a break is almost always false, and such cards are simply never born.
A break card read in full
“SOL · Level break · 15m · Long · level 103.40 · touches 2 · Bybit 102.90”. Read it like this: on the 15-minute chart price stands below level 103.40, the level has been tested twice, less than half a percent is left to it, and the coin passes the turnover and volatility gates. On the mini-chart the level is a purple dashed line with a band around it a quarter of an average bar wide — it is a band, not a line. What price does next the card does not promise: it says the situation is ripe.
Retest: the return to a broken level
A retest is born when a level was broken by a bar close, between two and twenty-four bars have passed since, and price is coming back to it from the new side without having touched it yet. The logic is as old as markets: those who missed the break wait for the return, those who entered on the break defend the position at the former obstacle. One detail of our implementation: a retest is counted only on swing levels — window extremes have no moment of breaking, and without it a retest cannot be told from a plain approach.
How the two kinds differ
- Break: price is IN FRONT of the level, the level is intact. Retest: the level is already broken and price returns from the other side.
- A break needs a cascade or two touches; a retest only needs the fact of an impulsive break.
- A break has coin gates (15m NATR from 3%, turnover from $30M); a retest has none and lives on quiet coins too.
- Breaks are looked for on 5m and 15m, retests also on the hourly and four-hour chart.
- Both are shown BEFORE the event: the card does not wait to see how it ends.
Calling every close past the line a break
The most common eyeball error: price stepped slightly past the level — “a break”. For the algorithm the close must go past the level by more than the tolerance, and the level itself must be significant. Without those conditions “breaks” on the five-minute chart run into thousands a week, and half of them are noise inside the level band. That is exactly why there are few break cards in the feed: a handful a day, not hundreds.
Open the break page and look at the mini-charts: on every card price stands IN FRONT of the dashed line, not past it. Then open retests — there price returns to the line from the opposite side. The difference is visible in seconds.
Open level breaksWhy are there a handful of break cards a day but a hundred retests?
A break has two gates a retest does not: the coin must have turnover from thirty million and hourly volatility from three percent, and the level must have a cascade behind it or two touches. A retest is born on any coin where a level was broken by an impulse and price is coming back. That is a difference in how rare the situation is, not a fault of the feed.
A level was broken yesterday and price came back today. Will there be a retest card?
On the five-minute chart, no: the retest window is twenty-four bars, which is two hours. On the four-hour chart, yes — there twenty-four bars are four days. The higher the timeframe, the longer a level “remembers” its break; that is why the same return shows as a retest on higher charts and no longer appears on lower ones.