Void of Buyers vs. Corporate Buyback PatternsToday’s TradingView tutorial explains how to recognize a Void of Buyers and Corporate Buyback candlestick patterns on a stock chart. These are entirely different price-and-volume patterns, and the Accumulation/Distribution indicator provides important confirmation.
When there is a Void of Buyers, the retail news will usually find some “reason” for the decline in the Dow 30, NASDAQ 100, and S&P 500. Yesterday and several times last week, there was a Void of Buyers. The retail news claimed that “investors feared…”—one of its favorite explanations—and blamed the declines on investors selling stocks.
That is NOT what happened.
If you study stock charts properly, you will see that the candlesticks were very small and volume was declining. These indicators reveal that JNJ stock fell NOT because of heavy selling pressure or panic selling, but because there was a Void of Buyers. Understanding the difference is a critical part of accurate stock chart analysis.
JNJ also has a large corporate stock buyback program. Once you know what to look for in the candlestick patterns, volume, and Accumulation/Distribution, you can see where the JNJ buybacks triggered and moved the stock price up several times.
Corporate buybacks—not individual investors—were responsible for those price moves.
HOW-TO: Using Power Bars on Higher Timeframes
Profiterol Power Bars works identically on every timeframe. This guide is a reading reference for using the indicator at higher timeframes: 4-hour, daily, weekly, and monthly. Nothing here prescribes a trading action. Readers form their own interpretation.
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WHAT HIGHER-TIMEFRAME READING LOOKS LIKE
The indicator's color logic on a monthly chart is identical to its color logic on a 1-minute chart. Bright green is bright green at every scale. Brand blue is brand blue at every scale.
What changes between higher timeframes and intraday is the speed of the reading. On a monthly chart a new bar prints once a month, so the color sequence develops slowly: a full sequence from one extreme through the transitional band to the other can take years. On a 1-minute chart the same color sequence might unfold within hours.
The same reading principles apply at every scale: sustained bright color is directional strength, extended transitional band time is chop, color sequences through the band are turning points. Higher-timeframe charts let these patterns develop with much more visible context per bar.
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THE HIGHER TIMEFRAMES
Four higher timeframes are commonly used: 4-hour, daily, weekly, and monthly. Each compresses more price action into a single bar than the one below it, and each produces a slower visual rhythm.
A 4-hour chart shows multi-day to multi-week patterns. Each bar covers four hours of price action. The visual rhythm is intermediate between intraday and end-of-day reading.
A daily chart compresses a full day of price action into a single bar. Color sequences develop across weeks and months rather than hours.
A weekly chart compresses a week of price action into a single bar. Color transitions take many weeks or months to play out, and visible patterns span quarters and years.
A monthly chart compresses a month of price action into one bar. Color sequences develop across years, and macro market regimes become visible at a glance.
The same color logic applies to all four. What differs is the timescale over which the reading evolves.
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LONGER PATTERNS, SAME PRINCIPLES
A higher-timeframe color sequence carries more accumulated price action per bar than an intraday sequence. A single weekly red-to-green transition reflects the same indicator logic as a single 1-minute red-to-green transition, but the weekly transition represents months of underlying price behavior compressed into the color of a single bar.
This makes higher-timeframe readings useful for macro context. A multi-year monthly chart shows the regime backdrop against which any intraday or daily reading takes place. A transition on a monthly chart is rare. When it happens, it reflects a substantial shift in the underlying market structure.
The slowness of higher-timeframe readings is a feature, not a limitation. A monthly chart that has carried sustained green for three years says something different than a 1-minute chart that has carried sustained green for thirty bars.
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WORKED EXAMPLES
EXAMPLE 1. 4-HOUR SCALE
The chart shows NVIDIA on a 4-hour scale across approximately three and a half months from early February to late May 2026. Price declines from around 188 to a bottom near 164 in early April, rallies sharply through April and early May to a peak near 236, then pulls back to around 212. The indicator carries red through the late-winter decline, brand blue at the bottom, sustained bright green through the rally, and transitional violet during the recent pullback. At the 4-hour scale, each bar covers four hours of price action; multi-week patterns develop with measured rhythm between intraday and end-of-day reading.
EXAMPLE 2. DAILY SCALE
The chart shows the Nasdaq 100 Index on a daily scale across approximately sixteen months from February 2025 to May 2026. Price declines from around 22,000 to a bottom near 17,000 in April 2025, rallies through summer 2025 to peaks above 26,000, oscillates between 24,000 and 26,000 through late 2025 and early 2026, declines to a second bottom near 22,000 in April 2026, then rallies sharply to recent highs above 30,000. The indicator carries red through both declines, sustained bright green through both recoveries, and transitional colors during the late-2025 consolidation. At the daily scale, each bar covers a trading session, and color sequences develop across weeks and months.
EXAMPLE 3. WEEKLY SCALE
The chart shows Ethereum on a weekly scale across roughly six years from mid-2020 to May 2026. Price climbs from around 250 to a peak near 4,800 in late 2021, declines through 2022 to lows near 900, recovers through 2023, rallies to new highs above 4,000 in 2024 and 2025, then declines to recent lows near 2,000. The indicator carries sustained bright green during the long rally to the 2021 peak, red through the 2022 decline, transitional colors during the 2023 base, bright green during the 2024-2025 rally, and red and transitional colors through the recent decline. At the weekly scale, major regime shifts develop across quarters and years.
EXAMPLE 4. MONTHLY SCALE
The chart shows Platinum on a monthly scale across roughly twenty-four years from 2002 to May 2026. Price climbs from around 400 to a peak above 2,200 in early 2008, crashes to roughly 750 in late 2008, recovers to nearly 1,900 by 2011, declines through a long bear market to about 580 in 2020, then rallies sharply to a peak near 2,900 in 2025 before settling near 2,000. The indicator paints sustained bright green during the multi-year rallies, distinctive red during the declines including the 2008 crash and the long 2011-2020 bear market, and transitional colors at the regime transitions. At the monthly scale, macro regime shifts become visible at a glance.
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DISCLAIMER
This indicator is an educational and informational tool, not personalized investment advice. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Trading involves risk, including loss of principal. All trading decisions are your responsibility.
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USEFUL LINKS
• Profiterol Power Bars : 
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Angle of Ascent, Support vs. Resistance & Retail NewsWhen a stock launches sharply out of a bottom, the Angle of Ascent becomes one of the most important signals to monitor. In this chart, the angle has gone near‑vertical , price has pierced resistance , and the candles are shrinking — a classic combination that tells swing traders it’s time to prepare an exit, not chase the final push.
Trying to capture the absolute high only increases risk. Vertical runs almost always retrace vertically , especially when the move is driven by speculative retail momentum rather than steady institutional accumulation.
Because this stock is still in a bottoming formation , the most reliable support sits near the upper boundary of the prior sideways trend . If retail buyers suddenly disappear — a common pattern during euphoric spikes — price can drop back to that level quickly.
Before entering any swing or position trade, study the prior candle patterns for signs of:
• Corporate buyback activity
• Professional trader nudges
• Dark Pool buy zones
These footprints often appear before the public sees the breakout. They provide earlier, lower‑risk entry points — the same areas professionals use — and help you avoid chasing late‑stage speculative runs that offer poor reward‑to‑risk. 
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A Risk Tolerance Test for All TradersRisk Tolerance trips up more traders than any other emotional aspect of trading stocks, or any other asset class. How is your risk tolerance? Would you say that you have a good stable risk tolerance? Or is it the main reason you take small gains or losses?
If you need help evaluating your risk tolerance, take this Risk Tolerance Test . If any of these apply, then there is a problem you need to address:
Do you get stopped out of trades and then watch as the stock moves up? This is caused by setting stops too tightly for the kind of trading style being used.
Do you panic as the stock retraces and lower the stop loss to avoid getting stopped out? This actually increases risk rather than lowering it.
Do you raise your stop loss before the stock forms a new consolidation for support? This also increases risk rather than lessening it. There is higher risk that you will get stopped out prematurely.
Do you check profit or loss everyday on your held stocks? Position traders should only be checking their balance once a month. Swing traders could wait for the end of the month but can do it weekly.
Are you a swing trader who checks your positions intraday to see what is happening? This runs the risk of reacting prematurely to intraday volatility that eventually evens out.
Have you given up on using stop losses because "they don't work"? You probably just need to learn a better method for placing stop losses.
Do you hold and hold with no stop loss, watching a stock tumble, unable to exit and ultimately exiting too late or "holding long term" instead? This is a chronic problem among retail traders that indicates the lack of a complete trading plan, one that provides a plan for when your holdings go against your intent.
To keep your risk tolerance in check try adding these simple steps to your trade analysis:
Carefully check the Risk to Reward ratio of your picks, and only trade stocks with a good probability for profit vs. loss.
Consider the amount of money at risk in each trade. Think about how you would feel if you lost that money should the trade go against you. Add this parameter to your trading rules.
Lower overall market risk by trading more than one or two stocks at a time. Spread your capital outlay over a few picks rather than putting it all on one trade.
Use stop losses on every trade. Place stops under the appropriate support levels for the chart patterns and your intent.
If you are a Swing Trader, it is important to enter trades only on strong market days. Not every flat day is a good day to swing trade. You'll keep more of your profits over time if you wait for ideal days and picks.
The simplest way to improve risk tolerance is to continually paper trade on a Simulator even after you've started trading live. Most beginners do not practice executing their trading plan sufficiently before jumping into the market. They allow emotion to cloud better judgment and let greed overwhelm decisions. Trading is the only business where normally calm, intelligent, and wise people do really greedy things that end up being foolish and risky. And it all comes down to the emotions that come with money, especially fear, greed and pride.
Traders have one thing to compete against and that is their own emotions, which can cause poor decisions. My best advice for all traders is this: compete against your own prior trading history to improve results, and ignore what is going on with everyone else.
Summary:
Emotional control comes from having a sound plan, sticking with it, and not changing it because the market has moved on a whim or some guy on social just made a lot of money. Create your trading style, which is a plan of attack for the market. Set out your strategies and use the correct ones for the current Market Condition. Only trade stocks that have a risk factor you can live with. Use stop losses appropriately, and you will be successful. Problems occur somewhere in all of this, when traders miss a step and deviate from the plan.
When you feel emotions getting out of hand, controlling your trading decisions, consider the above checklists for help evaluating and adjusting your mindset. Greed is a tough emotion to control, because it is insidious and hard to identify in ourselves. Fear is easy to identify and much easier to control or harness. A certain amount of fear is necessary and good in the market, because it keeps individuals from taking too much risk. However, fear that dominates daily emotional energy only creates constant losses. Think about this and study prior trades. If they performed well after being stopped out, then there is a risk problem to address in your trading plan.
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What Is Money Flow In & Out of a Stock? And Why Should You Care?Professionals often speak of money flowing in or out of a stock, but how can that be if there is an equal number of buyers and sellers? It is because “Money Flow” comes from the balance of the lot sizes.
There are four possible positions in any one stock:
Buy
Buy to Cover
Sell
Sell Short
Each investor and trader in the stock has their own separate agenda. Each may come from a different Market Participant Group. There are now 9 Stock Market Participant Groups, starting from those who buy first, at the bottom of a new upward cycle:
The giant Buy Side Institutions who invest Mutual and Pension Funds and/or create ETFs and other kinds of stock market derivatives.
The Sell Side Institutions, aka the big banks and major market makers
Wealthy Individual Investors
Corporations
Institutional/ Pro Traders
High Frequency Traders (HFTs)
Small Funds
Individual Small-Lot Investors, Investment Groups and Individual Retail Traders
Odd-Lot Investors
Buyers are anticipating that the stock is going to move up. Their stock order types span the spectrum, for example: Market Orders, Limit Orders, Stop Orders. Buy to Cover Orders are placed by traders who sold short and are now taking profits.
Those who are selling the stock are anticipating that the stock is going to move down. In an uptrending stock, this is profit-taking near the top of the run. It can also be similar in a downtrending stock because the seller is afraid that the stock is going to move down more, and they have been holding through what they thought was a short retracement. Most of these stock order types will be “Sell at Market” (SAM). Sell Short Traders are anticipating that the stock is going to move down, and they can place a variety of orders just like the buyers.
Both Buyers and Sell Shorters are entering the trade, while Buy to Covers and Sellers are exiting the trade.
It is the mix of these different types of buying and selling coupled with the kind of investor or trader and the size of their share lots that causes money to flow in or out of a stock.
If the buyers are mostly large lots and the sellers are mostly small lots, who is in control? The buyers purchasing large lots . This is because, at some point, there will not be enough small-lot sellers, and those who are Selling Short will turn and start Buying to Cover, creating more of a shortage of sellers. Consequently, this will put more pressure on the buy side.
There are always latecomers to a stock run, and they are usually small-lot buyers. As the stock moves up in price, more of the small-lot buyers will step in, pushing the price up even further. Most small-lot buyers typically use a “Buy at Market” Order, which is the worst kind to use to control the entry price.
As the stock moves up further in price, the last of the Short Sellers will panic and Buy to Cover, causing the stock to gap up or jump even higher. This then triggers the large-lot buyers to start selling for profit. As profit-taking begins, the stock dips in price. This causes the odd-lot buyer, who is the last in the market participant cycle to buy, to rush into the stock and buy because they have been told to “Buy the Dip.” By now, the news media has been talking about this stock and its great run. Consequently, the odd-lot uninformed investor finds the dip irresistible and buys on pure emotion without any analysis of the stock. This causes the final gap up and exhaustion pattern.
Now, while all of those odd-lot latecomers are buying, who is selling to balance the equation? Market Makers are Selling Short and the Smart Money, who were the first to enter, are selling to take profits. Suddenly, the large lots are now shifting to the downside, and what happens? The control switches to the sellers who are moving larger lots. Now, money is flowing out of the stock, yet the price may go up briefly before a downtrend develops.
Large lots are usually wiser investors and traders who know more than the other investors and traders. So the giant Buy Side Institutions investing Mutual and Pension Funds, who have access to information often not yet available to Individual Investors and Retail Traders, are called the Smart Money.
It can be assumed that the smaller the lot size, the less the investor or trader knows and understands about the market. As smaller lots move in, a shift of power occurs due to the large lots moving to the sell side, and thus money shifts to flowing out of the stock.
As the stock collapses and reaches a price or equilibrium near a base or bottom, those smaller lots who held through the collapse reach an emotional point of extreme pain of loss and begin to sell in panic. In response, the Smart Money and Market Makers switch roles again, Buying to Cover their profitable shorts and buying to hold as the stock moves up again.
Summary:
Every time you take a position in a stock, there are also three other positions in that same stock. You need to be aware of each of these and make sure that you are with the right group. Most of the time, traders who are having problems with their trades are simply trading with the wrong group. It is important, then, to learn about today's stock market structure and what I call the "Cycle of Market Participants." When traders can trade with the flow of the Smart Money, they have a decided advantage.
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How to Make Money in the Stock Market and Keep ItI have always said that making money in the stock market is easy. It is learning how not to lose money that is the hard part of trading. To that end, when you find yourself in the surprising and often disturbing position of having made a whole lot of profit, or more profit than you expected in a very short time, you may be feeling overwhelmed. This is when you need to remember some basics about the art of trading.
The primary factor in making money and keeping it depends upon your ability to stop trading to get your emotions under control again. Stop trading for at least a few days to a week. This sounds ludicrous, but my experience with teaching traders for more than 20 years is that those who follow this rule keep their big gains while those who do not, lose them back to the market and then some.
The reason behind this is emotion. You are in a state of emotional flux, not thinking logically. You are thinking, “I’m brilliant, I’m invincible, I am going to be rich!” Well, sure, but not at this moment. At this moment, you are overly exuberant, you are thinking you can do no wrong, so you are likely to miss the parts of your analysis that would keep you out of high-risk setups. So, take a few days to cool off. The Stock Market is not going anywhere. Great trades present themselves over and over again.
While you are recovering from the shock of a large gain, these steps can help bring you back down to Earth :
Review your notes from some of the courses you have taken. Reading back over rules and the reasons behind them for making sounding trading decisions helps a lot to keep you grounded.
Review your trading plan and your goals. If you don't have this written out somewhere, do it now. Most people refuse to write down their goals because of “fear of failure.” They are so afraid that they are not capable of reaching those goals that they do not try. Try to write down realistic goals, and adjust them as you see the need. We have a calculator that we provide to our students for help with this. Once you do the task of setting goals, you will find that they are achieved much of the time.
Consider if you need to increase your goals. Continually pushing yourself to reach higher and higher levels of efficiency and profit helps to both dispel the fear of failure and propel you forward with perhaps stricter rules to achieve those higher goals.
Trading is 50% skill which, in short, includes understanding your Trading Style and using proper Strategies for the current Market Condition.
The other 50% is controlling emotion, which includes setting goals, keeping calm and centered, using discipline in your trading rules, having the determination to keep working until you are successful, maintaining your personal parameters while expanding them, and using logic rather than emotion. These are the major components of making money and keeping it. Education 
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