Recapping past zones (Mar 14 2025)
A follow-up to our weekly zone alerts
Greetings, everyone!
Welcome to another issue of Zone Update—our weekly deep dive into our previous stock alerts to see how key zones influenced price action.
Now, with all tanking going on lately, it’s easy to lose conviction in your strategies and just give in to BTFD.
But from what we’ve seen in recent weeks, this could be a prolonged trade war with plenty of back-and-forths—meaning the dip you buy might not be the dip.
And as you’ll see below, trading with zones remains one of the best ways to ride these swings. Let’s take a look at a some examples.
In case you’re new here, each week we highlight stocks nearing or entering Hot Zones, i.e. key levels on the charts with great risk-reward setups. Stay tuned and subscribe to get these alerts before anyone else!
Check out this week’s hot zones:
Capital One Financial Corp. (COF)
Financial • Credit Services • USA • NYSE
Zone alert: December 31, 2024
“After a successful bounce off its previous ATH support, COF is back retesting the zone at 174.65-177.95
New ATH for 2025?” – @tradingplacesai on 𝕏
COF appeared on our radar when it landed on a zone that triggered a 50% decline back in 2021.
This was only the second time the August 2021 zone was being tested as a support—the first being just a week earlier, following the Fed’s hawk-ening.
With it being a strong historical zone, and selling volume having dropped drastically vs. the previous retest, we were anticipating a potential bounce.
That bounce came ten days later, after a third retest of the support. COF was able to reclaim its November 6 2024 zone—then-ATH levels—and very convincingly burst through it to record new highs.
Anyone who entered this play after the alert would’ve had two solid opportunities to lock in gains:
Roughly 3 weeks later, at the November 2024 zone (+8-11%)
After about a month, at new ATH prices (+14-17%).
Intel Corp. (INTC)
Technology • Semiconductors • USA • NASD
Zone alert: December 30, 2024
“INTC currently sitting on a support zone that's been untouched since 2013 🥴” – @tradingplacesai on 𝕏
This is, admittedly, not the most perfectly timed alert—but is still a textbook example for some great zone plays.
INTC was a bonus alert we gave out on X near the end of the year.
Our scanner flagged it as it returned to its February 2010 zone. This is a support zone that had delivered 12%, 15%, and 30% returns when it was repeatedly retested in August and September 2024.
Needless to say, we saw a similar move shaping up.
However, by the time we dropped the alert, INTC was already up by 7% from the zone… meaning the remaining upside to the next one was only 8%. Not the most ideal entry.
But what’s interesting is what happened the next two times it retested our zone.
Pretty much the same results as before. The January 10 retest led to a 15+% gain in just a week, while the January 31 retest yielded around 40% in less than two weeks.
Right now, INTC is again making headlines—it had just appointed a new CEO, and there are talks of a joint venture between TSMC, Nvidia, AMD, and co. to operate Intel’s factories.
And funnily enough, on the same day, INTC once again appeared in our zone scanner—having dipped right back to where else but the February 2010 zone.
So of course we flagged that on X too.
Since the bonus alert, INTC is up nearly 20%.
So until proven otherwise, we’re just going to assume that when it comes to this zone…
Tesla Inc. (TSLA)
Consumer Cyclical • Auto Manufacturers • USA • NASD
Zone alert: March 11, 2025
“If there’s a zone that has any chance of catching this falling knife, it’s the February 23 2021 zone. This zone … has repeatedly acted as a trampoline—stopping more dips than any other TSLA zone.”
TSLA’s been a bit of a hot mess lately.
Blame increased competition, blame production challenges, blame tariffs, or blame Elon himself… whatever the reason, the free fall has been brutal.
But the bleeding’s got to stop eventually (even if only temporarily)… right?
And we figured that band-aid could be the February 2021 zone. The bounces from this level speak for themselves.
Sure enough, it has begun. The day following the alert, TSLA dipped dangerously close to the zone, and then went up.
Had you entered the setup around this level, you’d be up about 11% as of yesterday’s close.
WTF are Zones, anyway?
Zones are key price levels where the market has reacted strongly in the past—such as sharp reversals or sudden swings.
They’re areas where actual supply and demand met in the past, and likely will meet again.
“Why are these significant?”
Well, it all comes down to three key principles. We like to call them The Principles of:
When I Dip, You Dip, We Dip (aka psychology)
Traders are aware that others are watching these levels (zones) too. With everybody paying attention, this creates a self-fulfilling prophecy where everybody acts in anticipation of everybody else’s actions.
Markets Gonna Market ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (aka technical factors)
If the first price rejection at the top of a zone was violent, it’s likely that buyers who entered at that level are now holding losses.
But with each retest, the rejection weakens, as there are fewer buyers remaining underwater. This weakens that resistance (or support for all you short-sellers), and could eventually lead to a break through.
Killer Whales (aka institutional plays)
Big players need liquidity in order to place massive orders without moving the market against themselves. So they wait for these zones, knowing a lot of us small fry (retail traders) will come to play.
This allows them to buy low or sell high without causing a lot of waves.
But remember: Zones are NOT guarantees but rather regions of increased probability for market moves. So always, ALWAYS use proper risk management.
Trading Places: Launch coming soon!
Stop obsessively refreshing your charts like it’s your ex’s Instagram.
By combining historical patterns with real-time market data, Trading Places identifies zones and assigns probabilities to each one—helping traders spot potential plays with higher chances of success.
It automates all of the curation, chart-plotting, and alerting for you, so you can actually have a life (or at least pretend to)!
Stay tuned!
Disclaimer: This isn't financial advice. This shouldn’t be news to you.