Fair Value Gap Examples: 7 Annotated Charts

Most fair value gap examples online are one perfect screenshot with no date and no ending. This page has seven, and each one tells you what happened next. Three are model charts, each built to show a single rule cleanly. Four are real candles from EURUSD, gold, GBPUSD and Bitcoin, with the timeframe, the date and the data source printed on the chart.

In order: a bullish gap candle by candle, a bearish gap and the candle it starts from, the three states a gap can be in, then EURUSD (left untouched), gold (filled halfway), GBPUSD (filled to its far edge) and Bitcoin (failed). If the term itself is new, what a fair value gap is covers it in plain English first.

How to read the charts on this page

Every fair value gap chart below uses the same marks. A violet band is the gap, from candle 1's wick to candle 3's wick. Numbered chips under the candles point at those three candles. A small x shows the high or low that candle 1 took from the candle before it. Green means the gap is still active, red means it is closed or failed.

The model charts are drawn to isolate one rule, so they carry no prices. The real charts carry the instrument, the timeframe, the date in UTC and the data source, because a real example you cannot check is just another drawing. Prices are rounded to the instrument's tick size. Your broker's feed can differ from these by a pip or a few cents, which matters more than people expect when a gap is only a few pips wide.

Example 1: a bullish fair value gap, candle by candle

This fair value gap diagram is the textbook bullish case. Price falls, candle 1 dips under the low of the candle before it, candle 2 carries price up in a single bar, and candle 3's low stays above candle 1's high. The band between candle 1's high and candle 3's low is the gap.

Two details turn three candles into an example. Candle 1 is the extreme candle of the move: it took the previous low, the liquidity resting just under it, and the gap is counted from it. The second detail is timing. While candle 3 is still open, its low can trade lower, and the gap can shrink or disappear before the bar ends. The gap is a fact only once candle 3 closes. A tool that marks it on the close and never moves it afterwards shows you the gap that existed. One that marks it mid-bar can show you a gap that never survived.

Nothing on this chart says price will come back to the band. It marks where the market moved too fast for both sides to trade. Whether price returns is what examples 4 to 7 are for.

Example 2: a bearish fair value gap, and which candle it starts from

A bearish gap is the same rule upside down: candle 1's low sits above candle 3's high. The harder question is which candle counts as candle 1. In this model, two three-candle gaps sit next to each other. The valid fair value gap example is the one counted from the highest candle, the candle that took the previous high.

Look at the top panel first. The candle marked 1 there comes right after the top of the move, and its high stayed below the high before it, so it took no liquidity. The band from its low down to candle 3's high is still a three-candle gap by the mechanical rule. It is just not the gap the move is about.

The bottom panel counts from the highest candle, the one whose wick went above the previous high. That is the candle the reversal started from, and the gap below it is the one that belongs to the order block at the top. In the method this page follows, a valid order block needs two things at once: liquidity taken, and an unfilled gap next to it. Count from an inside candle and you pair the block with the wrong gap.

This is also the invalid fair value gap example I see posted most often: a band drawn from whichever candle looked biggest, one or two bars away from the extreme. Start the count where the move started.

Example 3: active, closed or absent?

A gap is always in one of three states. Active means price has not traded across it. Closed means price has traded across all of it, so nothing unfilled is left. Absent means there never was a gap, because the wicks of candle 1 and candle 3 overlap. Most invalid fair value gap examples turn out to be one of the last two.

The top panel is the gap while it still matters. The band stays on the chart and extends to the right, because price has not touched it.

The middle panel shows price coming back and trading through the whole band. A wick reached the far edge and the candle's body closed inside the gap. There is nothing left to fill, so the band ends at that candle. Notice what did not happen: no body closed beyond the far edge, and price went on higher. Closed means used up. It does not mean the move failed, and example 6 shows the same thing on a real chart.

The bottom panel is the one beginners mark most often. The middle candle is big and the move is fast, but candle 3's low dipped under candle 1's high. The wicks overlap, so there is no gap at all, however strong the move looks.

One more case sits between the first two: partly filled. Price can trade into part of a gap and leave. That gap is still active, only smaller, and an indicator that follows the rule narrows the band to the part that is still unfilled. Example 5 is that case on a real chart.

Example 4: EURUSD, a bullish gap price never came back to

On 9 May 2024, EURUSD left a clean bullish gap on the 1-hour chart and did not return to it for the rest of the window. Candle 1 opened at 11:00 UTC and took the previous low. The 12:00 candle carried price up in one bar, and the 13:00 candle's low, 1.07550, stayed above candle 1's high, 1.07365.

The approach is the part worth studying. Price drifted lower through the night and the European morning, and candle 1 dipped to 1.07285, under the 10:00 low of 1.07331. That dip took the liquidity, and the candle that did it is candle 1. The next candle closed at 1.07608, more than 30 pips above candle 1's low. One bar did the work of several, which is what traders mean by displacement.

After that, price kept rising into the evening and moved sideways overnight. The lowest it traded in the 16 hours left in the window was 1.07654, about ten pips above the top of the gap. The gap stayed active and untouched.

This is the example most people picture, and it is easy to read too much into. A gap left behind is not a level price owes a visit. It may be revisited days later, or the market may move on and never trade there again. The chart shows only that price had not come back yet.

Example 5: gold, a bearish gap filled halfway

On 17 June 2026, gold printed a bearish gap on the 1-hour chart that price came back into overnight but never filled. The 17:00 UTC candle took the previous high, and the 18:00 candle fell from 4399.6 to 4305.2. The gap ran from 4315.0 up to 4375.7, and price later reached 4350.2 inside it before turning lower.

This chart uses COMEX gold futures rather than spot XAUUSD. The two move together at slightly different prices, so the levels on your own XAUUSD chart will not match these exactly, but the shape of the move will.

Candle 1 made the high of the chart at 4403.6, above the candle before it. Candle 2 then dropped almost 95 dollars in an hour, and candle 3 kept falling. Candle 3's high, 4315.0, stayed below candle 1's low, 4375.7, which left a gap of about 60 dollars.

Between 00:00 and 07:00 UTC on 18 June, price climbed back into the lower part of the gap. The deepest it reached was 4350.2. The upper part, from 4350.2 to 4375.7, never traded. That is what a partly filled gap looks like: still active, just smaller, and an indicator that follows the rule narrows the band to the unfilled part. Price then slid away and made a new low for the chart, 4233.0, at 16:00 UTC.

The tempting conclusion is that the gap held. Perhaps it did. The chart only shows that price turned somewhere inside the band and that the top part stayed unfilled for the rest of the window. It does not show why, and one example does not make a rule.

Example 6: GBPUSD, a gap filled to its far edge

On 23 January 2025, GBPUSD left a small bullish gap on the 1-hour chart, and four hours after candle 1 a wick went straight through its far edge. No candle body closed below that edge, and by 17:00 UTC price had made a new high for the chart. Filled and failed are different events, and this chart shows the difference.

Candle 1 opened at 08:00 UTC and dipped to 1.22950, under the previous low. The 09:00 candle carried price up, and the 10:00 candle's low, 1.23162, stayed above candle 1's high, 1.23048. That is a gap of about 11 pips: small, but a gap.

At 11:00 price started back down, and at 12:00 a wick reached 1.23021, through the far edge. By the definition in example 3, the gap was now closed, with nothing in it left unfilled. The same candle's body, though, closed at 1.23166, and no body closed below 1.23048 at any point afterwards. By 17:00 price had rallied to 1.23756.

So the gap was used up, and nothing broke. Treat every wick through a gap as a failure and you read this chart backwards. A failed gap needs a body close beyond the far edge, which is the next example.

Example 7: Bitcoin, a gap that failed

On 29 April 2026, Bitcoin left a bearish gap on the 4-hour chart between 76274.80 and 76972.32. Less than two days later, a candle body closed above the gap's far edge, and that ended it. Three candles after that, another body closed above candle 1's high, and the structure changed character to the upside.

Candle 1 opened at 08:00 UTC on 29 April, and its wick reached 77904.93, above the candle before it. The 12:00 candle fell from 77590.04 to 75924.25 in four hours, and the 16:00 candle's high, 76274.80, stayed below candle 1's low, 76972.32.

For the next day, price stayed mostly below the gap, with wicks poking into it. From 12:00 on 30 April, candle bodies started trading inside the band. Then the candle that opened at 00:00 on 1 May closed at 77131.08, above the far edge. That close is the failure. A wick through the band would only have filled it; a body beyond the far edge ends it. The gap is no longer an area sellers have any reason to defend.

At 12:00 on 1 May, a body closed at 78445.89, above candle 1's high. That high was also the last lower high of the drop, so an indicator that follows the rule marks this close as a change of character. Traders who use ICT vocabulary would say the gap inverted, meaning the same prices are now read from the other side. The inverse fair value gap page explains that reading, and change of character covers the structure side. For this page the point is simpler: the body close beyond the far edge is the moment the example stops being a gap example.

What the seven examples have in common

Every example, model or real, passed the same three checks before it counted as a gap: three candles whose wicks do not overlap, candle 3 closed, and candle 1 being the candle that took the liquidity. What happened afterwards was different every time, and the table below lines the outcomes up.

Where these examples stop being useful

I picked these windows because each one shows a single outcome cleanly. That makes them good for learning to read a gap and useless for judging how often gaps hold. Four real charts are not a sample, and nothing on this page tells you what the next gap will do.

Two practical limits apply. The real candles come from public feeds, Yahoo Finance for the currency pairs and gold futures and Binance for Bitcoin, and your broker's prices can differ by a pip or a few points. On a gap only a few pips wide, that difference can decide whether the gap exists at all on your chart. And reading a gap is a different job from trading one. If what you are after is fair value gap example trading, meaning where the entry, the stop and the target would go on charts like these, that process is laid out in fair value gap trading.

Seeing the gaps marked on your own charts

Marking gaps by hand on seven charts is a good exercise. Keeping track of them on every pair you watch is a chore. Money Hunter draws the fair value gap attached to each order block it marks, fixes the edges when candle 3 closes, and narrows the band as price trades into it.

It does not move a gap after the close, so the gap you review tomorrow is the one that was there in real time, and the 100-bar replay test lets you check that yourself. SMC ToolBox, part of the same subscription, marks fair value gaps as points of interest in their own right, on TradingView and on MetaTrader 4 and 5. Neither tool tells you which gap to trade. They keep the state of each gap on the chart, and the reading stays yours.

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