A VWAP anchored at the extreme
A standard VWAP anchors at the session open and accumulates from there. Midas does something different — it anchors at the session's price extreme. Not the open. Not a fixed time. The actual high or low the session has produced so far.
From that anchor point, it builds a volume-weighted average price curve forward through every subsequent bar. The result is a curve that reflects the average price paid — weighted by volume — since the market's most extreme point. That is what makes it structurally meaningful: it is not a time-based average, it is a participation-weighted average starting from where the market found its edge.
Bull and Bear
There are always two curves on the chart simultaneously.
It moves
Midas is not a fixed line. Every time the session makes a new low, the Bull Midas re-anchors from that new low and the curve restarts. Every time the session makes a new high, the Bear Midas re-anchors from that new high.
On a trending or volatile day, this can happen multiple times. The curves keep shifting as the session pushes to new extremes. They never fully stabilize, because the extreme keeps changing.
On most days, the session finds its extreme early — often inside the ▬Initial Balance or shortly after — and then holds it. No new high. No new low. Midas locks in and the curve becomes stable, building volume behind it bar by bar for the rest of the session.
When it settles
A settled Midas curve is a different thing from a migrating one. Every bar that passes without a new extreme adds more volume to the anchor calculation. The curve becomes heavier — weighted by more participation — and therefore more resistant to being broken casually.
By mid-session, a Midas curve that has been sitting in the same spot since the first hour has accumulated two or three hours of volume behind it. When price finally crosses the TD line and the entry fires off that structure, it is launching off something that has been reinforced for the entire session. That is why those days tend to ride longer. The base is deeper.
The gate
Midas is not a signal. It does not tell you to buy or sell. What it does is arm the system. The entry logic requires Midas to be present before it will evaluate anything else — no Midas curve, no entry consideration.
Bull Midas appearing means the session has produced a low with enough structure to anchor a volume-weighted curve from. The call side is now live. Bear Midas appearing means the session has produced a high with the same quality of anchor. The put side arms.
Everything else — the ♖Rook, the ♛Queen side, the IB location from the ▬Initial Balance, the ♘volume — all of that is evaluated after Midas is present. Not before.
On any chart
Open any charting platform that supports anchored VWAP — TradingView, thinkorSwim, Sierra Chart. Find the session low on a 5-minute intraday chart. Anchor a VWAP from that low. The curve that rises from it, volume-weighted from that extreme forward, is Bull Midas. Then find the session high and anchor a second VWAP from there. That descending curve is Bear Midas.
Watch where price is relative to each curve. Trading above Bull Midas means every bar since the session low has been, on average, accepted at a higher price — the low is structurally behind the move. Trading below Bear Midas means the same in reverse. When price sits between both curves, the session is balanced between the two anchors.
If the session makes a new low, re-anchor the Bull Midas from that new low and let the old one go. Same for a new high and Bear Midas. The curve always starts from the most recent extreme — that is what keeps it current.
That is Midas, on any platform, with any instrument. Z3Gamma anchors and updates both curves automatically — but any platform with anchored VWAP gives you the same structure.