CutlassEdge tracks them for you and ranks them into a ladder, the Magnet map, in the Levels tab. As with the rest of the reading layer, these are impersonal, educational reads: the same levels for every user, describing where the market has tended to return. A magnet is a level to be aware of, not an instruction to trade.
What makes a magnet
CutlassEdge builds the map from levels the market left and has not yet traded back through:
- Naked POC and naked VPOC (shown as nPOC and nVPOC). A prior session's Point of Control, by time or by volume, that price has not returned to. The most common magnet.
- Poor high and poor low. A flat extreme with no clean tail, an unfinished auction the market tends to return to and push past.
- Gap fill. An unfilled gap, where the crossed edge is the target.
- Low volume nodes (Interior LVN and Edge LVN). Thin, quickly-rejected price areas the market tends to revisit.
A level stays a magnet until price trades back through it. A single touch fills it, and it drops off the map.
Reading the Magnet map
In the Levels tab, the Magnet map, untested levels section lays out a ladder above and below the current price, nearest first (about six a side, with a "+N more" count for the rest). Each rung shows:
- Its kind (nPOC, Poor high, Gap fill, and so on).
- Its price, and how far it is from the last price, in points and in ticks.
- Its age: today, or how many days ago it formed.
- Evidence N. How many times price has reacted at that level across your loaded history (period highs and lows that stopped within a letter of it). The more evidence, the more the market has respected that price. It is a count, not a probability.
- Confluence. Rungs that stack with another untested level within a few ticks get a gold marker. Clustered levels tend to pull harder than lone ones.
- Weak stack N. When several of Charles's weak references pile up at one price. One weak reference is nothing on its own, but a stack pulls, and the pull compounds with each member added.
- First in path. While the market is trending, the app marks the first unrepaired level in the direction of travel, the next magnet likely to come into play.
When magnets matter, and when they do not
This is the part that keeps a magnet from being a false read, and it is one of Charles's core rules: momentum comes first. While the market is trending, magnets are targets on the way, not levels to fade. They only become places to lean on once momentum ends. CutlassEdge says this for you, right above the ladder, and the line changes with the day's state:
- Inside the first hour: *"momentum first, the magnet ladder waits."*
- Trending: *"magnets are targets on the way, not fades, until cessation."*
- Rotational, after the trend ends: *"magnets and the POC are in play."*
So a magnet is never a standalone reason to act. It is a level with unfinished business, weighed against what the market is doing right now.
How often do they get revisited?
Naked POCs, poor extremes, gaps, and low volume nodes each have their own tendency to be revisited, and CutlassEdge measures the actual rate over the history you have loaded, with the sample size shown next to it. That is covered in Base rates and sample sizes.