Wyckoff Scanner: accumulation and distribution on a live chart

Wyckoff method in plain language

In the 1930s Richard Wyckoff described the market as a place where one large player — he called it the composite operator — builds a position while the crowd is selling and unloads it while the crowd is buying. Doing that in one go is impossible: size moves price against you. So big money works inside a range. Price drifts sideways for weeks, and under that sideways drift the real work happens — accumulation before an advance or distribution before a decline.

The Wyckoff method is a way to read that work from the two things every chart shows: price and volume. Its three laws are plain. Supply and demand: price rises when demand exceeds supply and falls when supply exceeds demand. Cause and effect: the longer and wider the range, the bigger the move that follows. Effort versus result: when volume is heavy and price barely moves, somebody is absorbing that effort — and the move is about to turn.

From these laws Wyckoff derived his schematics — typical sequences of events inside a range, each with a name: selling climax, automatic rally, secondary test, spring, sign of strength. The scanner uses exactly these names. Unlike an indicator that outputs a number, a Wyckoff markup answers a different question: what stage is the range in, and what should happen next. The method is not tied to one market. It works on forex, crypto and indices alike because it describes participant behaviour, not the properties of a particular asset. Volume requires a source check: forex, metals, oil and indices use the explicitly labelled volume-proxy mode.

For the background, read Wyckoff method and TradingView and Richard Wyckoff’s strategy.

Accumulation and distribution: what the range looks like

Accumulation is the range that follows a decline. First comes preliminary support (PS) on rising volume — buyers step in noticeably for the first time. Then the selling climax (SC): a wide bar down on peak volume that closes off its low — the crowd panics and big money absorbs all of it. The SC low becomes the bottom of the range. The climax is followed by the automatic rally (AR), a sharp bounce whose high sets the top. Next is the secondary test (ST): price returns toward the low on lighter volume and fails to make a new one. That ends the stopping action and begins the longest part — building the cause — as price swings between the boundaries while volume on tests of the low dries up. The resolution is the spring: a false break of the low that runs the stops and is immediately bought. After it comes the sign of strength (SOS), a close above the top on volume, a pullback to the last point of support (LPS), and the jump across the creek — Wyckoff's name for the upper boundary.

Distribution is the mirror image after an advance. Preliminary supply (PSY), a buying climax (BC) on euphoria and volume, an automatic reaction (AR) down, a secondary test of the top. Phase B brings upthrusts (UT) — brief pokes above the top that are sold immediately. The decisive moment is the upthrust after distribution (UTAD): price breaks the top, pulls in breakout buyers, and reverses. Then the sign of weakness (SOW) — a close below the range low on volume — a rally to the last point of supply (LPSY), and breaking the ice, the lower boundary.

Re-accumulation and re-distribution are ranges within an existing advance or decline. Structure classification considers the trend over the 40 bars before the climax. A climax requires a spread of at least 1.8 ATR; relative volume is at least 2.5 for crypto and 2.0 for other real-volume markets. The SC close must be at least 30% of the bar height above its low; the BC close must be at most 70%. The automatic move establishes the opposite boundary. The current thresholds below come from the same API that computes the markup.

Wyckoff phases A–E

Wyckoff split the life of a range into five phases. It is a convenient coordinate system: once you know the phase, you know what has already happened and what to expect.

Phase A is short and noisy; entering here is premature — you do not even know yet whether it is accumulation or distribution. Phase B is the longest and holds the most false signals: breaks of a boundary by a few points that lead nowhere. This is where Wyckoff's law of effort and result matters most: if price approaches the low on ever-lighter volume, the sellers are gone.

Phase C is the only phase where the risk-to-reward is truly favourable. The stop goes beyond the spring low or the UTAD high; the target is the opposite boundary and beyond. The scanner marks instruments in phase C in amber and lists them first. Phase D confirms a range exit: on real-volume feeds SOS/SOW checks price and relative volume; forex, metals, oil and indices use volume-proxy mode and require a close 0.5 ATR outside the boundary without volume confirmation. In phase E the scanner shows the exit (JOC / breaking the ice) for another 20 bars, then closes the range.

The phase follows the last confirmed event rather than the current price. A spring requiring a test remains awaiting confirmation until that test. After AR, phase A waits for a secondary test for at most 30 bars on 1H, 20 on 4H and 25 on 1D. Phase E denotes an exit: the range remains visible for 20 bars, then closes while its history is retained.

Spring, upthrust and volume

A spring is a break of the range low that does not hold. Price dips below the climax low, collects the stops of everyone who placed them "under support", attracts breakout sellers — and closes back inside the range. If there is no real supply behind that break, there is nobody left to sell, and the way up is open. Wyckoff considered the spring the best entry precisely because its stop is obvious and close: below the spring low.

The scanner distinguishes three spring types by the volume on the breaking bar. Type 1 — volume below average: no supply, the most reliable variant, an entry is possible on the very next bar. Type 2 — volume around average: it needs a test, a return toward the spring low on lighter volume. Type 3 — volume above 1.5× average: this is a shakeout, sellers are still present, and there is no entry without a successful test. The test must arrive within six bars and must not undercut the spring low; if it does not come, the spring stays unconfirmed.

An upthrust is the spring's mirror at the upper boundary. An upthrust inside phase B (UT) is simply a false break of the top, one of several. The UTAD — upthrust after distribution — is the same break, but at the end of the range, once the cause has been built: price pushes above the top, buyers enter on the "resistance breakout", and volume on that bar is often well above average — big money is selling into that demand. A close back inside the range and a test on lighter volume confirm that it was a UTAD, not the start of an advance. The scanner assigns UTAD immediately on a false break of the upper boundary in phase C.

One rule covers both events: the break of the boundary is no deeper than 1 ATR and the bar closes inside the range. Anything deeper is not a spring or an upthrust — it is a breakout.

Effort vs result: how volume confirms the markup

Wyckoff's third law — effort versus result — grew into a discipline of its own, VSA (volume spread analysis), but its core fits in one comparison: volume is effort, price movement is result. When the two agree, the trend is healthy. When effort is large and the result is absent, somebody is absorbing everything that comes to market.

On real-volume markets, climaxes and tests are checked against relative volume, with a class-specific climax threshold. A type-1 spring uses below-average volume. Forex, metals, oil and indices use the approved volume-proxy mode: Spring and UTAD remain untyped, a test checks price and the absence of a new extreme within six bars, and SOS/SOW requires a close 0.5 ATR outside the boundary without volume confirmation. The Volume column shows a dash for proxy feeds; effort/result assessment is unavailable. With real volume, the disagreement mark denotes high volume without proportionate movement.

Average volume and ATR use the previous 20 bars. Price and volume ratios are not rounded before comparison with a threshold. Forex, metals, oil and indices are labelled volume proxy: incomplete feed volume is not presented as confirmation of market turnover. Zero volume or a zero average leaves the volume ratio unknown rather than making the volume check pass.

How to read the scanner

At the top are four numbers: how many instruments are in accumulation, how many in distribution, how many in the decisive phase C, and how many events happened in the last 24 hours. Below is the table across all instruments and timeframes: structure, phase, the latest event and how many bars ago it happened, where the close sits inside the range (0 % — low, 100 % — high) and the volume mark. Instruments in phase C are listed first, phase D next. Filters by asset class and timeframe and the "Phases C and D only" switch leave what is worth looking at right now.

Click a row to open the instrument panel: the chart with range boundaries, phase bands and event labels on the bars, a short verdict on what has happened and what to expect, the schematic atlas with a "you are here" marker, and the outcome statistics after the same event on this instrument. Hover an event in the atlas and it lights up on the chart together with its definition. At the bottom of the page is the 30-day event history with outcomes.

If you use Wyckoff indicators on TradingView, the difference is scope: a script sees one chart, the scanner sees the whole list and tells you which instruments are in phase C right now.

Check volume confirmation with the divergence scanner and Market Magnitude.

Where to trade: compare the current range with the open positions indicator.

Does the Wyckoff method work: outcome statistics

Phase C and D events are evaluated using closed candles without look-ahead. A target or invalidation is recorded when it occurs within the following 30 bars; if neither occurs, the window ends with no result. Recalculated historical marks are identified separately from an event first recorded in the live journal. Confirmation and cancellation retain their timestamps and reasons in history.

Over the last 30 days in the journal (initial snapshot and live observations), springs and UTADs reached the target in 26% of cases, invalidation took 70%, and 4% ended with no result. 12 range exits completed — fewer than twenty, so their shares are withheld here under the same rule the instrument panel uses.

The instrument panel shows the actual two-year sample for the selected event and timeframe: n and three shares — target, invalidation and no result. Below 20 instrument completions, it uses an explicitly labelled aggregate of the same asset class and timeframe. If that aggregate also has fewer than 20 cases, the exact n and insufficient data are shown without percentages. Waiting, cancelled and recalculated marks are not presented as independent completed outcomes.

These numbers are not a promise. They measure how often a markup produced by formal rules agreed with the move that followed. That is exactly what lets you decide which events on which instruments deserve trust and which deserve only observation.

Limits and risk

The scanner does not give trading signals and never says "buy" or "sell". The markup is an interpretation by published rules, and any rules are wrong some of the time: some springs turn out to be the start of a collapse, some climaxes are just a news spike. Real volume and a proxy are not interchangeable: forex, metals, oil and indices follow separate price rules and do not receive volume confirmation. On the 1H timeframe ranges are short and noisy — use it together with 4H. The scanner does not read the news and does not know about central-bank meetings. The rule thresholds come from the literature and are calibrated against accumulated statistics; the values are published in the "How the markup is computed" block.

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