Suspension Block — The New 2025 PD Array Explained

In September 2025, Michael Huddleston added a new zone to the ICT dictionary — and not a variant of something familiar, but a concept built on an entirely different candle geometry. The Suspension Block isn't a gap between wicks like an FVG, and it isn't a single candle before an impulse like an Order Block. It's a candle whose body is "sealed" on one side by someone else's wick, while being surrounded on both sides by gaps between candle bodies — and that combination is exactly what makes the market treat it as a hard reaction zone. In this article we explain what the Suspension Block actually is, how it differs from an FVG, how to identify it step by step, and how to trade its retest on BTC and ETH.

What Is a Suspension Block

Before defining the Suspension Block, you need to understand its building block — the volume imbalance. This is a body-to-body imbalance between two consecutive candles: the second candle opens above the close of the first (bullish volume imbalance) or below it (bearish), leaving a gap between the bodies. The key point: the wicks of the candles can overlap here — the imbalance is defined purely by the mismatch between bodies, not wicks. That's the opposite of a classic FVG, where what counts is the gap between the wicks of candle 1 and candle 3, while the bodies can do whatever they want.

A Suspension Block is a single candle that has a volume imbalance both above its body and below it — it's "suspended" between the two — while its body is completely covered by the wick of the neighboring candle on the left side.

That last condition is what separates a Suspension Block from a random, coincidental stack of imbalances. The preceding candle's wick is long enough to reach across the entire body range of the middle candle — and it's exactly that wick which physically prevents a classic FVG from forming there, because an FVG requires clean wick-to-wick space, and here there is none. Yet the middle candle's body remains isolated from its neighbors by body-to-body gaps on both sides. The result: a zone that behaves like an FVG (an inefficiency price returns to) without actually being one — and most traders scanning for classic three-candle gaps will walk right past it.

The formation has two variants, symmetrical like every PD Array:

A bullish Suspension Block is a bullish middle candle: a volume imbalance above its body (against the candle to the right) and a volume imbalance below its body (against the candle to the left), with the left candle's wick fully covering its body. It acts as hidden support.

A bearish Suspension Block is the mirror image: a bearish middle candle with the same two body-to-body gaps and the same left-wick-overlap condition. It acts as hidden resistance.

The Suspension Block joins the family of "invisible" PD Arrays alongside the Hidden Order Block — both require you to look below the surface of the chart to see them, but the mechanics differ: a Hidden Order Block conceals an entire Order Block inside the wick overlap of two candles, while a Suspension Block builds its zone out of a single candle bracketed by two body gaps. It's worth having the full hierarchy of zones in your head — including the classic Order Block and FVG — before you start hunting for Suspension Blocks on a live chart.

How to Identify a Suspension Block Step by Step

Identifying one requires checking three conditions across three consecutive candles — skip even one and you get something that looks similar but isn't a Suspension Block:

1. Check the wick-over-body overlap. The wick of the preceding candle (on the left) must fully cover the body of the middle candle. If the wick only partially reaches it, or there's clean space between them, you're looking at a potential FVG, not a Suspension Block.
2. Verify the volume imbalance above the body. There must be a real body-to-body gap between the middle candle's body and the body of the next candle (on the right). Wicks can touch — bodies can't.
3. Verify the volume imbalance below the body. Same condition between the middle candle and the preceding candle. Without this second gap, you just have an ordinary candle with a single imbalance, not a Suspension Block — both gaps are required simultaneously, one alone isn't enough.

The order in which you check matters in practice: start by looking for a candle with a long wick that seems to "swallow" the body of the next candle — that's the fastest way to filter candidates at a glance. Only then confirm both body-to-body gaps. The tradable zone itself is the body range of the middle candle — its upper and lower edge — sometimes extended to include the adjacent volume imbalances for a wider entry.

The range context applies exactly as it does for every other PD Array: a bullish Suspension Block only makes sense inside the higher-timeframe discount zone, a bearish one only inside premium. Timeframes aren't arbitrary here either: on the daily and H4, a Suspension Block marks zones for swings measured in days; on M15/M5 it delivers precise intraday triggers, most often inside the New York session window, when volatility produces plenty of long wicks. Regular zones — Order Blocks and FVGs — are drawn automatically by our SRL indicator, which frees up your time for exactly this kind of manual work: fishing out less obvious setups like the Suspension Block.

How to Trade a Suspension Block

The sequence is nearly identical to other PD Arrays — the main difference is that the Suspension Block itself only appears as a lower-timeframe trigger, after the structure has already been confirmed:

Step 1 — higher-timeframe bias. The daily and H4 tell you whether you're looking for longs or shorts. Without this step, a Suspension Block is just a random candle on the chart.

Step 2 — mark premium and discount. Split the higher-timeframe range in half. A bullish approach only trades discount, a bearish approach only trades premium.

Step 3 — wait for price to tap the bias-aligned zone. Price has to enter the correct half of the range on its own — you don't chase it there.

Step 4 — drop to the lower timeframe. M5 or M1 to catch the trigger, the same way you would for any intraday entry in the ICT method.

Step 5 — wait for the MSS. A clean market structure shift in the direction of your bias, right inside the higher-timeframe zone. Without an MSS there's no confirmation — the mere presence of a Suspension Block isn't enough.

Step 6 — identify the suspension candle. After the MSS, look for a candle whose body is fully covered by a neighbor's wick and which has two volume imbalances, one above and one below. Confirm both conditions before you mark the zone.

Step 7 — wait for the retest. Price needs to come back into the suspension candle's body on the next leg. Entering on the first touch without a retest is guesswork.

Step 8 — entry. Long at a bullish Suspension Block, short at a bearish one — on the retest of the body.

Step 9 — stop and target. Stop below the low (long) or above the high (short) of the suspension candle, or behind the nearest swing for extra room. Target: the nearest liquidity pool in the direction of the move — an old high/low, equal extremes, or an unfilled higher-timeframe FVG.

On BTC and ETH, this setup gets natural support from market microstructure: cascading liquidations of leveraged positions regularly produce single candles with long wicks that fully cover the body of the next candle — exactly the geometry a Suspension Block requires. The cleanest examples show up during the New York session window, when liquidity is deepest and the M5 MSS confirms quickly, without hours of waiting. As with every other PD Array, confluence raises the quality: a Suspension Block sitting right on a level of equal lows or equal highs reacts harder than the same structure in a random spot on the chart.

Example: ETH in bullish H4 structure corrects toward discount, and M15 prints a clean MSS to the upside. On M5, a candle appears with a decisive bullish body — the prior candle's wick fully covers it, there's a gap above the body to the next candle, and a gap below the body to the previous one. Price makes one more leg down, returns exactly into that body, and bounces. Entry on the retest, stop below the suspension candle's low, target on the liquidity above the correction's high. From the H4 perspective, that low looked like an ordinary wobble — only on M5 was it a textbook Suspension Block.

Common Mistakes

• Confusing volume imbalance with FVG. A volume imbalance is a body-to-body gap (wicks can overlap). An FVG is a wick-to-wick gap (clean space, no overlap). A Suspension Block requires the former, not the latter.
• Ignoring the wick-overlap condition. Without a wick that fully covers the middle candle's body, you just have an ordinary candle with two gaps sitting next to it — not a Suspension Block. This condition is what separates the formation from a coincidence.
• Treating a single gap as sufficient. Both are required: a volume imbalance above the body AND below it. Just the upper or just the lower gap is a different, weaker configuration.
• No MSS confirmation. A retest of the suspension candle alone, without a prior structure shift on the lower timeframe, is a bet on random support, not a confirmed setup.
• Ignoring the premium/discount context. A bullish Suspension Block without a prior tap of the higher-timeframe discount zone (and, mirrored, a bearish one without premium) loses its logic — context is part of the setup's definition, not an add-on.
• Stop too tight, right on the body. The wick can reach back into the zone one more time before the market truly turns. A buffer below the low or above the high is mandatory.
• Confusing the Suspension Block with the Hidden Order Block. Both are "invisible" PD Arrays that require looking below the surface of the chart, but they have different formation geometry — see the Hidden Order Block article for the differences.

The Suspension Block is proof that the ICT method keeps evolving — a new 2025 zone built on geometry most traders have never consciously checked: a wick covering a neighbor's entire body, bracketed by two body-to-body gaps. On BTC and ETH, where long wicks after liquidations are a daily occurrence, there are more of these setups than you might expect. This week, scan the ETH M15 chart after one of the recent MSS prints, look for a candle whose body is fully covered by a neighbor's wick, and check whether there really are two separate volume imbalances above and below it. Once you learn to see this geometry, the Suspension Block stops being a September 2025 curiosity and becomes another tool in your PD Array toolkit.

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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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