For Business

Trends & Market Structure

Real Break vs Fake Break

A break of a level is a close on its far side, and it is called real if the closes that follow stay there and fake if they come back within a day or two. This paper shows you both from gold's daily candles in March 2025 — one break that held for three weeks and one that came back in two days — the idea as a ball and a goal line, both breaks on the daily chart, the ten closes after each as dots above or below the line, and how to show a level only on the timeframes where a daily close can be seen on your platform.

Difficulty
Intermediate
Reading time
5 min
Pages
8
Reviewed by
Saman Rahbar

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Two breaks in one fortnight

A break is a close on the far side of a level. On 13 March 2025 gold closed at 2988.65, above the February high of 2956.13, and every close for the next three weeks stayed above it. On 19 March it closed at 3047.28, above the 18 March high of 3038.22; the next day it closed above again; on 21 March it closed at 3022.92, back under, and stayed under for four days. The first break is called real and the second fake. On the day each happened they looked the same: one candle closing past a line.

The goal line

The picture is a goal line. The whole ball must cross it for a goal; a ball on the line, or one that rolls over and is hooked back, is not one. The level is the line and the close is the ball. A candle that closes on the far side has crossed. Whether the break was real or fake is decided by the days after: still on the far side, and it was real; back across within a day or two, and it was a ball hooked back.

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