Before candlestick patterns, before indicators, before any strategy โ there's support and resistance. Almost everything else in technical analysis is really just a more detailed way of talking about the same underlying idea: price tends to react at certain levels, over and over, because real orders are sitting there.
What they actually are
Support is a price level where buying pressure has repeatedly stepped in and stopped price from falling further. Resistance is the opposite โ a level where selling pressure has repeatedly capped how high price can rise.
These aren't magic lines. They exist because real participants โ institutions filling large orders, traders who got caught on the wrong side of a prior move, algorithms programmed around round numbers โ have genuine reasons to buy or sell at that specific price, again and again.
Why they form
A few real, common reasons a level becomes meaningful:
Prior swing highs and lows. If price sharply reversed at a certain level before, some traders remember it and place orders there again โ expecting history to repeat, and by acting on that expectation, sometimes making it repeat.
Round numbers. Price often reacts around clean, round figures (1.1000, 2000.00) โ not because the number is special, but because that's where a disproportionate number of people set orders, simply because round numbers are easy to remember and use.
Prior consolidation zones. A price area where the market traded sideways for a while, building up a large number of orders at similar levels, tends to matter again if price returns there.
The role-reversal idea โ genuinely useful
Once a resistance level actually breaks, it often becomes support going forward โ the same price, but flipped roles. This happens because the traders who sold at that resistance (expecting it to hold) got proven wrong, and are now motivated to buy back once price returns to that level to limit their loss โ which itself creates real buying pressure right at that price.
This is directly connected to how a real breakout differs from a fakeout: a genuine breakout typically returns to retest the broken level and holds there, using the old resistance as new support. A fakeout retests and keeps failing.
How to actually spot these levels
Look for a price that price has touched and reversed from more than once โ one touch could be coincidence, but two or three touches at a similar price is a real, repeating pattern worth marking.
Think in zones, not exact lines. Price rarely respects a level to the exact pip โ a "level" is really a small range where reactions have clustered, not a single precise number.
Give more weight to levels on higher timeframes. A support level that's held on the daily chart carries more real weight than one that only shows up on a 5-minute chart, since more participants across more of the market are watching it.
The common beginner mistake
New traders often draw far too many lines โ marking every minor wiggle as a "level" until the chart is unreadable. The levels that actually matter are the ones with multiple real touches, ideally visible across more than one timeframe. Fewer, stronger levels beat a chart cluttered with dozens of weak ones.
This is exactly the idea behind SonaPips' own Asia session range โ the high and low of that session become real support and resistance for the rest of the day, and it's the actual reference point every signal gets measured against.