What is Premium / Discount Zone?
Dividing a price range into upper half (premium — favored for selling) and lower half (discount — favored for buying), with the midpoint called equilibrium.
How Premium/Discount works
Identify a price range — the most recent significant swing high to swing low. Divide it in half. The upper 50% is "premium" — price is relatively expensive compared to recent range. The lower 50% is "discount" — price is relatively cheap.
The simplest application: buy in discount, sell in premium. The 50% midpoint (equilibrium) is the decision line. Above equilibrium = bias toward shorts. Below equilibrium = bias toward longs.
This is fundamentally a value framework. Even without complex price action, traders avoid buying at peaks and shorting at valleys.
Premium/Discount + Order Blocks
The combined framework: identify the higher-timeframe range, draw the equilibrium line, then look for Order Blocks in the favored zone for your bias.
Example: if higher-timeframe trend is bullish and price is in discount (below equilibrium of the most recent leg), the bullish Order Blocks in discount become high-probability long zones. Bullish OBs in premium are lower-probability — you'd be buying after price has already moved up.
This filter alone removes a huge amount of poor trades from a typical retail trader's books.
Discount in downtrends
Premium and Discount are symmetric: in a downtrend, "discount" zones (below equilibrium of the most recent leg) are where SELLS make sense, not buys. Don't blindly buy discount in a falling market.
The rule restated correctly: in an uptrend, buy in discount; in a downtrend, sell in premium. The direction of overall trend determines which side of equilibrium you favor.
- Drawing the range from random points — must be a significant swing leg
- Buying discount in a downtrend (or shorting premium in an uptrend) — direction of trend matters
- Not redrawing the range when a new structural high/low forms
- Trading equilibrium itself — it's indecision; wait for premium or discount
