# Trapped or not trapped — lesson

Gym heading: Situational awareness. Written before the code (Sep 7 2026). The teach screen shows this text; the answer key implements the rule in it and nothing else. Distances are in M everywhere. Harness, confidence, persistence, and reveal format follow stop-vs-noise; the charts come from point-at-the-bar's generator v2 (the same pre-line regimes and decoys).

Choices made where the order was silent:

- The margin is 0.10 M and applies on both sides of the level: a close counts as through the level, or back on the original side, only when it sits more than the margin past the line. A close inside the margin positions nobody and lets nobody out. Without this a close a hair through the line would be a break, and the decoys would have no definition.
- The break is the first close through the level after a close that wasn't, so a chart that opens on the far side of the line (the generator's from-above approach) does not start with a break.
- Touch and level are point-at-the-bar's: a bar that reached the zone (0.10 M either side of the line) from the near side and closed on the near side, after price had been at least 0.5 M away since the last touch; two touches make a level (Jim's convention, docs/point-at-the-bar-rule-sources.md).
- The freeze lands 2 to 6 bars after the break (drill; 2 to 8 in the holdout), drawn without looking at the case, and the reclaim or the second close beyond lands on a bar drawn the same way. The depth of the break, the regime before the level, the hold, and the decoys are drawn the same way for every case too.
- The no-one-home reps always close through and close back, so they look exactly like the trapped reps; a wick-only variant would be readable from the shape. They carry zero or one touch at even odds.
- The N in the trapped takeaway is the number of closes through the level before the reclaim: the bars on which the chasers were filled. The charts carry no volume, so no count of contracts exists.
- The trapped side's stops sit at the reclaim bar's extreme on the original side: its low under a ceiling, its high over a floor. The bars between the reclaim and the freeze stay short of that extreme, so the stops are intact when the question is asked. No tick grid in this module; the reference implementation has none.
- The next 20 bars are drawn with an unwind rate that is a config constant and is never shown; the reveal says what price did, in M, and nothing about how often.
- Point-at-the-bar's decoy had a middle bar that closed through the line; here that is a break, so the decoy's middle bar closes inside the margin instead. Same purpose, same place in the hold.
- Soft clock 10 seconds: three checks (the circles, the close through, what came after), the same as point at the bar.
- M is the median range of the 20 bars before the break, not the last 20, so the break and what followed don't set their own unit.

Persistent header: **"Training your eye for who's stuck at a level."**

## Before you fade

- **Level** — a price the market has already reacted to more than once: **two or more touches**. A touch is a bar that reached the zone (0.10 M either side of the line) from the near side and closed on the near side, after price had been at least 0.5 M away since the last touch. The touches are circled on every chart. Count them before you read anything else.
- **The margin** — 0.10 M. A close counts as through the level, or back on the original side, only when it sits more than the margin past the line. A close inside the margin, either side, is on the line: it positions nobody and lets nobody out.
- **The trap** — A trap is when price closes through a level that has been touched at least twice, and a later bar closes back on the original side by more than the margin. The people who chased the break are now on the wrong side with stops behind the reclaim bar's extreme. They are trapped. If the break holds — two closes beyond the level with no close back — nobody is trapped; that's acceptance. If the level had fewer than two touches, nobody was positioned; a wick through it traps no one.
- **Why it matters at the trade** — Decision: a fade entry exists only where someone is trapped. Their forced exit is the fuel. The entry is the retest of the level, not the reclaim bar; the fuel sits behind the reclaim bar's extreme, where the trapped side's stops are.
- **What it doesn't say** — Trapped is not a forecast. It says nothing about whether the retest comes, how far the unwind runs (Runway), whether the stop survives the noise (Stop vs noise), or which single bar said sell (Point at the bar, which reads the same level one bar at a time).
- **M** — The median high-to-low range of the 20 bars before the break. Every distance here is in M. The number for the current chart is on the screen.
- **Confidence is a number** — Low means 40%, Medium 65%, High 90% that your call is right. Scored Brier-style: sure and wrong costs 0.81, unsure and wrong costs 0.16, sure and right costs 0.01. Being certain is as expensive as being wrong.

## The read

Three things, in order: the circles (two or more, or not), the bar that closed through the level, and what the bars after it did: a close back on the original side by more than the margin, or a second close beyond with no close back. Then the question: is someone stuck?

## The rep

A chart from the point-at-the-bar generator, frozen a few bars after price went through the level. The level is drawn, the touches circled, M stated. The question, in full: **"Price went through the ceiling (or floor) a few bars ago. Is anyone trapped?"** Trapped or Not trapped, with a confidence.

## The reveal

The next 20 bars, the break bar and the deciding bar marked, and for a trap the line where the trapped side's stops sat. The touch count, the break's depth in M, the deciding close's distance from the level in M against the margin, the verdict, and one takeaway line. Templates:

- Trapped: **"The {longs|shorts} from {n} close{s} {above|below} the level are stuck {below|above} it, stops at {X} ({d} M {below|above} the level). The retest is the entry."**
- Not trapped, accepted: **"It closed through twice and stayed. Nobody needs out. Chasing the break is the trade, not fading it."**
- Not trapped, no one home: **"{Zero|One} touch{es}. Nobody was there to get caught. A reversal at a fresh line is a guess."**

Every rep ends on one of these three lines. Each is a decision: fade the retest, chase the break, or leave the fresh line alone. No win percentage is shown anywhere; the next 20 bars are what they are.

## Answer key

`trapped = (touches before the break >= 2) AND (a bar closed through the level by more than the margin) AND (a later bar, before the freeze, closed back on the original side by more than the margin)`. Not trapped otherwise: **accepted** when the touches are two or more, a second close beyond the margin followed the break, and no close came back past the margin; **no one home** when the touches are fewer than two. The three cases come up a third each (config). No case can be read from the bar count, the depth of the break, the hold, the decoys, or the regime before the level: those are drawn the same way for all three. Some reclaims sit within a few hundredths of M of the margin on purpose, and some accepted breaks pull back to a close just inside it; the reveal shows the numbers either way.