Price Magnets
Intraday price levels that repeatedly attract SPX — the market keeps returning to and oscillating around them. SPXXL scores each level by how often price touches it and round-trips through it.
A Price Magnet is an intraday price level that acts like gravity for SPX — the market keeps drifting back to it, pausing at it, and oscillating around it throughout the session. These are the levels where liquidity concentrates: resting orders, dealer hedging flows, and prior-session reference points all pull price toward the same zones again and again.
Unlike a support or resistance line (which price is expected to bounce off or break through), a magnet is a level price gravitates TOWARD from both sides. On a rotational or Balanced Day, magnets dominate — price ping-pongs between them. On a Trend Day, magnets get overrun as price accelerates in one direction. Recognizing which regime you are in tells you whether to trade magnets as mean-reversion targets or to expect them to fail.
How SPXXL measures a magnet:
SPXXL scores every candidate level using two distinct intraday behaviors, computed bar-by-bar across the session:
- ●Touches — how many bars had the level inside their high-to-low range. A high touch count means price kept interacting with the level, spending real time near it rather than blowing past.
- ●Crosses — how many times price flipped from one side of the level to the other between consecutive bars. A cross is the defining round-trip behavior of a true magnet: price went above, then came back below (or vice-versa), proving the level is pulling price through itself, not just resting against it.
The Magnet Score:
- ●Magnet Score = touches + (2 × crosses)
- ●Crosses are weighted double because a round-trip through a level is the purest signature of magnetism. A level with many touches but zero crosses is more like a wall (support/resistance); a level with many crosses is a genuine attractor.
Two resolutions SPXXL surfaces:
- ●5-Point Zones — The top magnet zones snapped to a 5-point round-SPX-strike grid (e.g. 5500, 5505, 5510). These align with the strikes 0DTE traders actually trade and where dealer gamma concentrates. SPXXL ranks the top zones by score, highest first.
- ●1-Point Level — The single strongest exact 1-point level, for traders who want the precise gravitational center rather than the rounded zone.
How 0DTE traders use Price Magnets:
- ●Strike placement — On a Balanced or rotational day, magnets are natural targets. Iron condor and butterfly bodies placed at or near the dominant magnet have the wind at their back, because price is statistically drawn toward that level into the close.
- ●Mean-reversion entries — When price stretches away from a strong magnet without a trend regime confirming the move, the magnet becomes a reversion target — a place to fade the extension back toward.
- ●Avoiding chop — If the top magnets are clustered tightly together, the session is likely to grind sideways between them. That is a warning to size down directional trades and favor premium-selling structures over debit spreads.
- ●Confluence — A magnet that lines up with VWAP, the Initial Balance edges, or a high-gamma strike is far more reliable than one standing alone. SPXXL surfaces magnets alongside these levels so you can spot the confluence.
Magnets vs. the Close Zone™:
Magnets are backward-looking evidence — they are computed from where price has ALREADY spent its time and round-tripped this session. The Close Zone™ is a forward projection of where SPX is likely to settle. When the dominant magnet sits inside the Close Zone, the two signals agree and conviction is highest: price has been repeatedly pulled to a level that also projects as the probable close.
Where to find them: Price Magnets appear on the SPXXL live chart as a compact bar in the top-right, offset clear of the price axis, listing the top-scoring zones for the session. This is an ELITE chart feature — freemium users see the chart without the magnet overlay.
Important: Price Magnets are educational, statistical descriptions of intraday behavior — not signals, predictions, or financial advice. Magnets that dominated a rotational morning can be shattered the moment a Trend Day or liquidity sweep takes hold. Always confirm the current session regime and live price action before trading around any magnet. 0DTE options carry substantial, fast risk of total loss.
Related Terms
The price range established during the first 30 minutes of trading (9:30-10:00 AM ET) — a key reference for the entire session.
SPXXL's proprietary projected closing price range for SPX, computed using session classification, gamma exposure, and intraday momentum.
A charting methodology that organizes price by time and volume to reveal value areas, balance, and auction theory — the foundation of session classification.
A session where price oscillates around a central value area with no directional conviction — the most common session type for SPX.
The aggregate gamma positioning of options market makers — determines how dealer hedging amplifies or dampens SPX price moves.