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Rejection Blocks, Trading the Wick Zone

Most traders mark order blocks using candle bodies. Rejection blocks flip that habit and focus on the wicks, the part of the candle that shows where price was pushed away. A rejection block forms when price makes a strong move into a level, leaves a long wick showing it was refused, and then reverses. The wick area becomes the zone of interest, because it marks where opposing orders were waiting.

How to identify one:

1. Find a swing high or swing low with an unusually long wick relative to the body.
2. Confirm that the wick formed at a meaningful location, such as after a liquidity sweep or at a higher-timeframe level.
3. Mark the wick area, from the tip of the wick to the edge of the body.
4. Wait for price to return to the zone later.

How to trade it:

- Look for a lower-timeframe reaction as price re-enters the wick zone.
- Place your stop beyond the extreme of the wick.
- Target the nearest opposing liquidity.

Why it can work: the long wick shows aggressive rejection. When price returns, traders who were trapped or who missed the first move often act again at the same area.

Caution: a wick alone isn't a setup. Without context, such as bias, liquidity, and structure, you'll mark rejection blocks everywhere and trade none of them well.

Practice by scrolling through your 1H chart and marking only the three most obvious wick rejections. Then watch how price treats them on the next visit.

Worth separating wicks made by structure from wicks made by a release. A long wick printed in the minute after a data surprise often reflects a liquidity gap and a spread blowout rather than orders waiting at that price, and the zone tends to get ignored when price comes back. I'd skip any wick whose timestamp matches a high-impact release and mark only the ones formed in normal trading.

Rejection blocks complement body-based order blocks well. A question worth testing: should the zone be the full wick, or only part of it, e.g. from the body to the 50% point of the wick? The full wick gives a wider zone and wider stop, with more fills; the half-wick version gives a better entry price but misses more trades.

Running both versions on the same set of swings over a few months shows which one has the better average R. It may differ between instruments, since gold's wicks tend to be longer relative to the body than EURUSD's.

For step 1, I found that unusually long needs a number or every swing qualifies. Mine is a wick at least twice the body and at least 1.5 times the average candle range of the previous 20 bars on the same timeframe.

On the full versus half wick question, there is a middle option I use. Entry at the 50 percent point of the wick, stop beyond the tip, so the stop stays where the full version puts it but the fill price improves.

The cost is missed trades, as mentioned above. On EURUSD 1H price often reacts a few pips inside the wick and never reaches the midpoint, so I keep a record of the misses to see what they would have paid.

I also only trade the first return to the zone. A wick zone that has already been touched and held once has used up some of the orders that made it, and the second visit was clearly weaker in the swings I marked.

When you mark the three most obvious wicks as suggested, do you include the ones made during Asia? Those look dramatic on the 1H but often come from very thin trading.