The lines the chart already drew
Most traders draw support and resistance by hand — placing lines where they think the market cares, based on visual memory and judgment that varies from one trader to the next. Two people looking at the same chart will draw different levels. One will be right. Neither knows which one in advance.
Tom DeMark solved this by letting the chart draw its own lines. Not from round numbers or yesterday's close — from the market's own recent turning points. The local peaks and troughs it already made and then left behind. The TD Supply Line and TD Demand Line are those levels. In Z3Gamma, these are the lines the Rook watches.
The construction
Each line is drawn through two qualified pivot points — bars the market itself identified as a local peak or trough. A TD Supply Point is a bar whose high is greater than both the bar before and the bar after: high[i] > high[i-1] && high[i] > high[i+1]. A TD Demand Point is the mirror: low[i] < low[i-1] && low[i] < low[i+1].
Because the lines are projected rather than redrawn on every bar, they represent the structural trajectory the chart has established from its two most recent turning points. When price crosses the projected Supply Line from below, that is the structural break the Rook names.
When the Rook fires
The Rook fires on a single bar — the exact moment the structural level changes hands.
What the cross tells you
The Rook is not a test of the line — it is a close through it. Price touching the projected Supply Line and pulling back is not a Rook. Price closing above it is. The distinction matters because the line is the market's own structural trajectory — drawn from qualified peaks, not placed by hand. A close above it means price has genuinely broken through that trajectory, not just probed it.
This is why the Rook is binary. The structural state of the session is either changed or it is not. No gray area, no "almost crossed," no debate about whether the close counts. The rule is consistent. The signal is precise.
Signal quality
Not all Rooks carry equal weight. The break itself is binary — it fired or it did not — but the context around the cross determines how much that break means.
Why it matters for options
Entry timing is everything in options. Buying a call at the wrong structural moment means carrying the position while price works back to where it should have started — burning time value against you. The Rook gives you the exact bar where structural resistance became structural support.
A call entered on or just after a Green Rook — with the ♛Queen already above the Kijun — is entering with the structural break confirmed and session bias aligned. Price has already cleared the level that was standing between it and the next move up. That is a different entry than buying into a range and hoping support holds.
When the ♘Knight is also firing on the same bar — RVOL elevated, Queen on side, Rook green — the position has three independent confirmations on the same event: structural direction, session bias, and participant volume. That combination is what Z3Gamma is built to surface.
On any chart
DeMark indicators are available on most major charting platforms including TradingView. Search for "TD Sequential" or "TD Supply Demand Lines" in the indicator library. Once added, the Supply and Demand lines are drawn automatically from recent local peaks and troughs — no manual placement required.
Add them to a 5-minute chart alongside the Kijun-sen. The check is fast: watch for a bar that closes above the Supply Line after price has been trading below it. That is the Green Rook. Then look left — is the Kijun below current price? If yes, the Queen is on side. Then look at the volume sub-pane — is RVOL above 1.2? If yes, the ♘Knight has fired. Three readings, three indicators, one bar.
Z3Gamma runs this logic automatically across a broad ticker universe and surfaces the combinations in real time. But the underlying check is simple enough to do by hand on any platform where you can place these three indicators on screen together.