Concept · Liquidity pools
Equal Highs & Lows Backtester
Two highs at the same price is the most legible liquidity pool on any chart — every breakout trader's stop is sitting a tick above it, and everyone knows it. The useful question isn't whether the pool exists. It's how often it gets taken, and what happens next.
Why equal highs are worth detecting mechanically
"Equal" is a tolerance, not an identity — two highs are never exactly equal, and where you set that tolerance decides whether your chart shows four pools or forty. Setting it by eye means it moves with your mood. Setting it as a parameter means your backtest is reproducible, which is the only property that makes a backtest worth running twice.
Detected as they build, equal highs are a forward-looking object: the pool exists before the sweep. That's the rare case in technical analysis where the setup is genuinely visible in advance, and it is why this is one of the most testable concepts there is.
The test
Log every pool the detector marks, then record the outcome: taken and reversed, taken and continued, or never touched at all. That third bucket is the one traders forget, and it's usually bigger than expected — a pool that sits untouched for two weeks was not a setup, it was a drawing.
Pair it with the sweep detector so the take is marked as well as the pool, and you can measure the gap between them: how long a pool typically survives on your market is a genuinely useful number that almost nobody knows.
Frequently asked questions
How close do two highs need to be to count as equal?
That's a tolerance you set. It's a parameter rather than a fixed value precisely because the right answer is different on gold and on EURUSD — and because a threshold you can state is a threshold you can re-run.
Does it mark equal lows too?
Yes — both sides, with separate colours, so a chart showing pools above and below reads as two different stories rather than one.
Is this the same as a double top?
Geometrically, often yes. The difference is what you do with it: a double top is a reversal pattern to trade, an equal high is a liquidity pool to expect price to take. The backtest is how you find out which framing your market rewards.
Open GBPUSD with liquidity pools marked
One click — equal highs and lows drawn as they build, sweeps marked as they're taken.
Open the chart →