Method · Zonetta Trading · published 7 September 2026

The Zone Score: which zone deserves your risk

Draw supply and demand zones properly for a week and the chart fills up with them. The question that decides anything is not is this a zone. It is is this zone worth the risk — and I answer it with a number out of seven, written on the zone before price gets back to it. This page is what that number describes, what it cannot do, and two graded zones with what happened next.

The free two-page checklist → How a zone is drawn →

01 / The question

A grade is a description of a zone, not a prediction about a market

The method as it is usually taught ends at “here is a zone”, and a chart with eleven zones on it is not more information than a chart with none. So every zone I draw gets graded before I take it: four criteria, each asked as a question about the zone as it sits on the chart, and the answers add up to a number from zero to seven. The criteria are named on the method page — how hard price left the base, how long the base took to build, whether anyone has been back since, and where the zone sits in the larger structure. What each one is worth, how the four combine and what disqualifies a zone outright are not printed anywhere on this site, and this page is no exception. What it prints is the behaviour of the number.

The first thing to understand about that number is what kind of thing it is. It is not a forecast. A seven does not say price will turn there and a two does not say it will not. It says what the zone is — how clean its origin was, how untouched it is, how well placed — in a form that can be compared with yesterday’s zone and next week’s. That comparability is the whole point. A decision that can be compared can be reviewed, and a decision that can be reviewed can be improved. A feeling about a zone can be neither.

The second thing is when the number is written. Before price arrives, on the chart the zone was drawn on, and never revised because the return looks nervous. A grade written while price is inside the zone is a rationalisation with a number on it, and it is worth exactly what the feeling it replaced was worth.

4 / 7

Example output · filled segments, an unfilled remainder, and a number

02 / State

Fresh zone, tested zone, traded-through zone, as the grade sees them

The question people actually search for is whether a fresh zone is better than a tested one, and the honest answer is that the question is one criterion out of four. Freshness is a state, and the state changes the moment price interacts with the zone.

Fresh: Price has not been back since the base was formed. Whatever imbalance emptied the level once is, as far as the chart can tell, still sitting there. The freshness criterion answers yes.
Tested: Price has returned at least once and traded inside the band. Some of what was there has been worked through. The zone still exists and it still gets a grade, but the freshness criterion no longer answers a plain yes, and how far into the band the visit went is part of that answer.
Traded through: Price has gone past the distal line. The zone is finished, it comes off the chart, and it is not graded at all — a grade for a zone that no longer exists is how people talk themselves into a trade.

So a fresh zone is worth more than the same zone tested, and that is the whole of what freshness decides. It does not decide the grade. A fresh zone can still fail three other questions and finish under the cut, and a tested zone can still pass the other three and finish above it. Anyone who tells you “only trade fresh zones” has replaced four questions with one, and the one they kept is the easiest to read off a chart, which is not the same as the most useful.

The grade also moves. A zone graded on Monday and tested on Tuesday is a different object on Wednesday, and I grade it again if I am still watching it. What I do not do is grade it again while price is inside it, for the reason in section 01.

03 / Two zones

Two graded zones from the same fortnight, and what happened next

Both zones below were drawn and graded by the indicator on a live Nasdaq-100 futures chart, and the grade was recorded in the morning pipeline before the outcome, which is the only order in which a grade means anything. The edges in the figures are recomputed from the cached bars by the rule on the method page — the near edge at the candle bodies, the far edge at the wick — and every price in the two figures is asserted against those bars by the script that draws them. The indicator’s own drawings, made on 5-minute candles, put the near edges a few points away, at 29,679.75 and 29,115.25; the far edges are the same. Nothing is rounded toward the story.

Real session · supply zone graded 2 of 7 · NQ, 5-minute bars, 19–20 August 2026

The pause in the last twenty minutes before the New York open on 19 August, then a fall of roughly 290 points in the first twenty minutes of the session. The zone’s near edge is at 29,683.5 and its far edge at 29,747.75. That evening price climbed back, went six points into the band and turned; at 21:00 ET it came back a second time, three ticks in, and turned again. It was graded 2 out of 7 in the small hours of the 20th, with those two touches already on record. At 02:50 ET it came back a third time, went three points in, turned once more, and by early afternoon was about 480 points below the band. The far edge was never reached.

Outcome · touched three times, distal line never reached · the zone held

Real session · demand zone graded 3.5 of 7 · NQ, hourly bars, 4–24 August 2026

A two-bar pause on the 15-minute chart early on 4 August — a single hour in this figure — with the near edge at 29,120.75 and the far edge at 29,074, followed by a rise of roughly 800 points the same day. Twenty days fresh. It was graded 3.5 out of 7 on the morning of 18 August, exactly on the cut. In the overnight session of 24 August price came down to the near edge twice, a hair and then four points in, and was turned back both times. At that day’s New York open it went through the near edge, through the far edge and on to 28,946.75 inside the first hour. The outline is dashed because the zone did not hold.

Outcome · price traded through the distal line at the open · the zone did not hold

Read the two outcomes next to the two grades and the temptation is to conclude that the grade is backwards. The lower grade held and the higher grade failed. That is exactly the conclusion the grade is designed to survive, and it is worth being precise about why.

The 2 was not a prediction that the supply would fail. It was a description: a short pause, a violent departure, and one test already on record when the grade was written. Under the cut, so not a zone the rules let me take — and it held anyway, as zones under the cut sometimes do. Not taking a zone that then holds costs nothing. The 3.5 was not a prediction that the demand would hold. It was a description of a clean, fresh, twenty-day-old base that scored exactly on the cut, on a morning when the whole index opened into a hole. It was a zone the rules allow, and when a zone like that is taken by the rules, the stop beyond the distal line does its job and the loss is the distance in section 09 of the method page, in ticks, plus whatever the fill costs on an open like that one.

A grade is meant to sort zones, and whether it does is a question only a record can answer: the graded zones with their outcomes, written down as they come, the ones that did not hold included. That record is being built in public, and it is the only evidence I intend to offer. Over one zone the grade proves nothing, in either direction, and any page that shows you a single graded zone that worked is showing you a coin that came up heads.

04 / The cut

Three and a half, and what sits under it

Cut-off
3.5 of 7

The one number from inside the grade that is public is the cut: below three and a half out of seven, the zone is not traded. Not traded smaller, not traded with a tighter stop, not traded because two other things happen to agree with it. Not traded.

The reason it is a cut and not a ranking is that a ranking invites bargaining. If the best zone on the chart is a 3, a ranking says take the 3, because it is the best available; a cut says there is nothing to take today, and most mornings that is the honest conclusion. The market does not owe you a zone above the cut every session, and a method that always finds one is a method that has quietly lowered its cut.

The cut also settles the argument that comes up most often, which is confluence. On 18 August, by the morning’s recorded snapshot, the nearest demand under the Nasdaq-100 sat at 29,647 to 29,659, graded 3 out of 7, and that morning’s put wall from the levels page sat at 29,656 — inside it. Two methods pointing at the same place. Under the cut, so not traded. Two methods agreeing on a place does not make a weak zone strong; it tells you where to look, and the grade then tells you whether what you found is worth anything.

05 / Where it lives

The same number, in four places

The grade is one number and it is produced in one way, but it turns up in four places on this site, and it is worth knowing which one you are looking at.

On paper — the checklist: The free two-page checklist is the scorecard itself: the four questions, worked down by hand, ending in one number out of seven and the cut. It is the version to start with, because it is the one that teaches you what the questions mean.
On the chart — the indicator: Zone Score MTF draws the zones from two timeframes and prints the grade in each zone’s label as it draws it, before price arrives. It is the tool that graded both zones above. It is a separate product from the course, it is on a waitlist, and nothing on this page depends on it.
In the morning — the podcast: The two-minute market prep names one graded zone on the sessions it runs, with its grade and whether it is over or under the cut, and the next episode says out loud what that zone did. That is where the outcomes are spoken before they are written anywhere.
In full — the course: The course is where the four criteria are taught with their weights, drilled on charts you have never seen, and checked against an answer key. It is the only place the inside of the number is explained, and that is deliberate.

06 / Limits

Four things the grade cannot do

It cannot predict: Section 03 is the whole argument. A grade describes the zone in front of you in terms that let you compare it with the last one. Whether price turns there is decided by the market on the day, and the grade has no opinion about the day.
It cannot size the position: How much a zone costs if it fails is the distance from the near edge to a stop beyond the far edge, in ticks, on the contract you are on. That is arithmetic, it is on the method page, and it is the same for a 6 and for a 4. A high grade is not a reason to risk more; it is a reason to take the zone at all.
It cannot fix a drawing: The grade assumes the two edges are in the right place. Put the near edge on a wick instead of the candle bodies and every grade downstream is describing a zone that is not there. The drawing comes first, and the seven ways I have got it wrong are on the method page.
It cannot stay still: A visit changes the zone, so it changes the grade. The number written on Monday is a fact about Monday. Reading it on Thursday as if nothing had happened in between is the mistake the state section exists to prevent.

No figure on this site is a win rate, a return or an account curve, and none ever will be. What is published instead is the graded zone and what it did, including the ones that did not hold — because a method you only ever see working is indistinguishable from a method that does not work.

07 / Next

Where to go from here

If you want to grade a zone yourself: Take the two-page checklist. Free, and it is the only place the scorecard lives.
If you want the drawing first: The method page is the base, the proximal and distal lines, the four origin shapes, which chart the zone is drawn on, and the execution arithmetic in ticks.
If you want the grade printed on the chart: Zone Score MTF, on a waitlist, with an honest account of what it does and does not do.
If you want to see the zones graded every morning: The market prep, about two minutes, before the New York open, with the previous zone’s outcome said out loud in the next episode.
If you want the inside of the number: The course, where the criteria are taught with their weights and drilled. Paid, and separate from every tool on this site.

Get the free Zone Score checklist The method →