Where institutions accumulate and distribute

1. What is a zone?

A demand zone is a price area where institutions have repeatedly stepped in to buy. A supply zone is where they step in to sell. These are not random levels — they're areas of repeated institutional activity.

Because institutions return to the same places, price respects these zones. When price approaches a zone again, institutions are likely already positioned there, watching for the same setup they've traded before. This is why price so often reacts when it returns to a zone.

A zone can be as simple as a price area where a strong move paused and then resumed. PAI identifies these areas across multiple timeframes and scores them based on quality, strength, and alignment. The specifics of how we identify and mark them are in the methodology guide.

2. The four pattern shapes

Zones come in four shapes. Two represent demand (institutions buying), two represent supply (institutions selling).

Every zone you'll see fits one of these four shapes. The shape tells you the context — whether the zone is stopping an existing trend (reversal) or continuing it (continuation).

3. Multi-timeframe context matters

A zone that appears on your daily chart also exists somewhere inside a weekly, monthly, or longer-term candle. That larger context matters — it tells you how much institutional weight is behind the zone.

A daily zone that aligns with a weekly, monthly, or yearly zone is stronger than one that stands alone. The more timeframes that agree, the stronger the zone — and the more likely institutions are watching it at that exact price.

This is why PAI scores multi-timeframe alignment as one of its four core factors. Higher-timeframe agreement strengthens a zone's probability.