Order Block
The last opposing candle or consolidation before an impulsive institutional move — a zone where large orders were positioned, expected to act as support or resistance on the retest.
What is an order block?
An order block is the footprint of institutional accumulation: the final down-candle (for a bullish order block) or up-candle (bearish) before price displaces impulsively in the opposite direction. The logic: institutions filling large positions leave resting interest at the origin of the move, and when price returns to that zone, the unfilled remainder of those orders defends it.
Not every last-candle-before-a-rally qualifies. Valid order blocks share three traits: the move away shows displacement (impulsive, full-bodied, ideally leaving a fair value gap), the move breaks structure, and the block ideally forms after taking liquidity — the institutional entry was funded by someone's stops.
Trading the retest
The standard play is the return-to-origin entry: wait for price to retrace into the order block (the 50% of the block is a common refinement), look for a lower-timeframe reaction — a sweep of a minor low inside the zone, a small CHoCH — and position with stops beyond the block. Blocks in the discount half of the dealing range (for longs) carry materially better expectancy than blocks in premium.
Freshness matters: a block being tested for the first time has all of its resting interest intact. Each subsequent test consumes it, and a block that has been mitigated repeatedly is closer to breaking — at which point it may flip into a breaker.
How Pushing Profits applies it
Order-block logic underpins the platform's zone detection, and its signal engine requires the surrounding confluence — displacement, structure break, liquidity taken, discount/premium position — rather than firing on every candle pattern. Institutional options flow at the retest is the strongest available confirmation that the zone is being defended with real capital.
Frequently asked questions
How do I tell a valid order block from a random candle?
Demand the full sequence: liquidity taken before the block formed, displacement away from it, and a structure break. A last-down-candle without those is noise, not an institutional footprint.
What happens when an order block fails?
A clean break through an order block flips it into a breaker block — the zone switches from support to resistance (or vice versa). Failed blocks are information, not just losses.
Order block vs supply/demand zone?
Same underlying idea — origin zones of impulsive moves. Order-block methodology is stricter about the institutional sequence (liquidity, displacement, structure) and about zone freshness.