HRLR & LRLR — High and Low Resistance Liquidity Runs

You already know that price travels from one liquidity pool to the next. But there's a question that separates a real trade plan from wishful thinking: can price actually get there at all? Not every pool is equally reachable. Some levels the market reaches within an hour, smoothly and without resistance — others can take a week, printing ten pullbacks along the way. ICT calls this distinction HRLR and LRLR: liquidity runs with high and low resistance. It sounds like yet another acronym for the collection, but in practice it's one of the most down-to-earth things in the entire method — it tells you where to place a take profit that actually stands a chance of getting filled, and where you're just drawing dreams on your BTC chart.

What HRLR and LRLR Are

Both terms describe the same phenomenon — price's path to a liquidity pool — just from two opposite sides.

LRLR (Low Resistance Liquidity Run) is a run through liquidity with low resistance. We're talking about short-term highs and lows forming inside an ongoing trend. In a bullish structure, every consecutive local high on ETH is a level with short sellers' stops and breakout traders' orders hanging above it — and at the same time nothing defending it. Price approaches, collects, moves on. The characteristic signature of an LRLR is a dynamic move that leaves a Fair Value Gap behind — price passed through the level so fast it didn't have time to trade along the way.

HRLR (High Resistance Liquidity Run) is a run through liquidity with high resistance. This means an old, significant high or low — one defended by a whole army of intermediate structures: local highs, lows, zones where the market has turned around repeatedly. Before price can reach such a level, it has to force its way through each of those barriers one by one. That takes time, wears the move down and often requires an external catalyst: in traditional markets that's releases like NFP, CPI or FOMC decisions; in crypto — the same macro data (BTC reacts to it just as strongly) plus the market's own events, such as regulatory decisions or ETF flows.

The key to the classification lies in the direction of institutional order flow. If the D1/H4 structure is bullish, every short-term high above price is an LRLR — the market collects them one after another almost on autopilot. But the long-term low below price, where that trend started, is an HRLR — to get back there, price would have to break the entire structure defending it. In a downtrend it's the reverse: every intermediate low is an LRLR, and the old high above the market is an HRLR.

In other words: liquidity aligned with the trend is cheap to collect, liquidity against the trend is expensive. The rest of this article is just the consequences of that one sentence.

How to Identify HRLR and LRLR on the Chart

The classification is a simple, repeatable procedure:

1. Determine order flow on D1 and H4. Bullish, bearish or neutral? This is the foundation — without it you can't classify a single level. If the structure is ambiguous, drop the whole framework until it clears up.
2. Mark the long-term high and low. The extremes defining the larger range the market is moving in. These are your HRLR levels — ambitious, distant, defended targets.
3. Map the short-term swings aligned with the trend. In a bullish structure: every unswept local high above price. In a bearish one: every unswept local low below price. That's your LRLR ladder. Our SRL indicator marks untouched highs and lows automatically, so you get this map ready-made without any manual drawing.
4. Check the FVG signature. Look at how price collected previous levels. Fast runs leaving gaps behind = a market in LRLR mode, price delivery running smoothly. Grinding approaches to levels followed by immediate rejections = high resistance lives in that area.
5. Distinguish a run from a sweep. An LRLR is a run — price passes through the level and continues. A sweep collects the liquidity and reverses. Both can touch the same level; only price behavior after the fact tells you which scenario you're dealing with.

Note that a classification isn't assigned to a level permanently. When the structure flips, yesterday's HRLR can become today's LRLR — the levels stay, what changes is the direction the market looks at them from.

How to Trade With HRLR and LRLR

The most important thing first: HRLR and LRLR are above all a framework for setting targets, not an entry signal. You take the entry from your normal model — a pool sweep, a structure shift on a lower timeframe, a retest of an FVG or an order block. This classification answers the question that comes a moment later: how far can this position realistically travel?

Step 1 — TP1 always at the nearest LRLR. The nearest unswept swing aligned with order flow is the target with the highest probability of getting hit. Trading toward an LRLR is "easy" by definition: the market wants to go there because nothing is stopping it. If you're long BTC after a sweep of a local low in a bullish structure, your first target is the nearest untouched high — not the all-time high.

Step 2 — HRLR only as an extended target. The old high or low stays as TP2, and only when something can actually push the market there: scheduled macro data, high volatility, a swing position with a multi-day horizon. Aiming at an HRLR on a quiet session with no catalyst is the most common reason an "almost there" trade gives back its entire profit.

Step 3 — manage at the first LRLR. When price reaches TP1, you take partial profit and move the stop to break-even. From that moment, any ride toward the HRLR happens on the market's money, not yours. That's the entire "magic" of this framework: LRLR pays the bills, HRLR is an occasional bonus.

Step 4 — read the ladder as a roadmap. A series of unswept LRLRs between price and a big target is also a forecast of the move's character: the market will collect them in stages, with pullbacks along the way. No intermediate levels (because price left empty FVGs behind) means the road back down will be fast too — that's what the concept of internal and external range liquidity is about.

A crypto-specific note is worth adding. On 24/7 markets, the distribution of resistance shifts with the session: on weekends and during the Asian night liquidity is thin, so seemingly "low-resistance" levels can get taken out by empty, erratic wicks with no follow-through. The real LRLR runs on BTC and ETH most often show up during the London–New York overlap — where there's volume capable of displacement. If your plan assumes collecting three LRLR levels on a Sunday afternoon, that's not a plan, that's a hope. Second note: in crypto, the role of an "HRLR catalyst" is played not only by macro data but also by large options expiries, regulator decisions and ETF inflows/outflows — the calendar of those events should hang right next to your chart.

An ETH example: H4 structure bullish after the weekly low got swept. Three untouched local highs above price, and higher up — an old high from a month ago. The plan: entry off an FVG retest after an MSS on M15, TP1 at the first local high (LRLR), partial profit, stop to BE, the rest of the position aiming at the second and third highs. The old high? It stays on the list, but only if CPI is on the calendar or the market catches clear momentum. That's the difference between a plan and a fantasy.

Most Common Mistakes

• Targeting an HRLR from an intraday setup. A position built on M5 rarely has the "range" to reach a defended D1 extreme. Set TP1 at an LRLR and let the trade first prove it works at all.
• Treating every swing as an LRLR. Only levels aligned with order flow are low-resistance. A swing against the trend is high resistance by definition — no matter how close it looks.
• Ignoring the FVG signature. A low-resistance run almost always leaves a gap behind. A move without displacement and without an FVG is probably a sweep, not a run — and that's an entirely different piece of information.
• Forcing an HRLR without a catalyst. The market doesn't break through a defended level "because it looks nice." No macro data, no volatility, no reason — the HRLR usually stays untouched and your TP hangs in a vacuum.
• No management at the first LRLR. A position that reached its first target and came back into a loss isn't bad luck — it's the mistake of having no plan. The first LRLR is a mandatory decision point: partial profit and break-even.
• Confusing an LRLR with a sweep. Both collect liquidity at the same level. A sweep reverses, a run continues. If you classify the level before price reacts, you're guessing.

HRLR and LRLR are that rare ICT concept that doesn't add to your workload but subtracts from it: instead of agonizing over every level separately, you split the liquidity map into "cheap" and "expensive" targets with a single order-flow rule. You'll find the foundations of that map in the articles on buy-side and sell-side liquidity and liquidity pools, and you can read about what happens after a level gets touched in the piece on the difference between a sweep and a run.

FAQ

Rafał — Krypto Bez Ściemy

Trader and founder of Strefa Tradingu. He’s been breaking crypto down on YouTube for years — no hype, no signals, with a focus on market structure and risk management.

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