FX Claims, Tested · #4

Do pivot points hold?

“Price respects the daily pivots. Watch R1 and S1 for the turn.”

Verdict: not supported
15 markets: FX majors, indices, gold, silver and oil · 2004–2026 · last run 1 Oct 2026
← All claims tested

The claim

Pivot points are calculated from yesterday's high, low and close, and they're one of the most widely used sets of levels in day trading. Our own currency pair and index and commodity pages show them. The claim is that price reacts at them: resistance above, support below.

The levels

Pivot (P)(yesterday's high + low + close) ÷ 3
R1 / S12 × P minus yesterday's low / high
R2 / S2P plus / minus yesterday's range

How we tested it

  • "Held" means: on days that opened below a level and traded up to it, the day closed back below it. (The mirror image for support.) If the close went through, the level broke.
  • The fair comparison: any level near the edge of a day's range will "hold" a lot of the time, pivot or not. So every real pivot was compared with decoy levels placed at exactly the same distances from the open, borrowed from other days, 50 times over. Decoys have nothing to do with pivots. If pivots matter, real ones should hold more often than decoys.
  • 15 markets, 2004 to today: the seven FX majors plus US30, NAS100, SPX500, UK100, GER40, gold, silver and US oil.
  • A limit we can't get around with daily data: we can see whether a level held by the close, but not the order of moves during the day, so this isn't a test of a full stop-and-target system.

The headline result

Real pivots held
64.2%
Decoy levels held
64.1%
Difference
+0.1 pts
Level tests counted
155,293

Across every market and every level, real pivots held almost exactly as often as meaningless levels at the same distance. Whatever "respect" price appears to show at pivots, it shows the same respect to random lines drawn in the same places.

Level by level

FX and the other markets are shown separately because they behave differently: FX trades around the clock, so each day opens almost exactly where the last closed, while indices often gap. That's why the overall "held" percentages differ so much. What matters is the gap between real and decoy within each group.

LevelFX: real heldFX: decoyFX: differenceOther markets: realDecoyDifference
R2 (outer resistance)87.0%84.2%+2.8 pts42.9%42.9%−0.1 pts
R184.2%84.0%+0.2 pts44.6%44.3%+0.4 pts
Pivot (P)80.9%83.9%−3.0 pts46.5%46.1%+0.3 pts
S184.7%84.2%+0.5 pts47.4%47.3%+0.1 pts
S2 (outer support)86.9%84.4%+2.5 pts47.3%46.8%+0.5 pts

R1 and S1, the levels most traders actually watch, show nothing in either group. The indices, gold, silver and oil show nothing at any level.

The one wrinkle

In FX, and only in FX, the outer levels (R2 and S2) held about 2.7 points more often than the decoys, across all seven pairs, while the central pivot held about 3 points less often. That consistency makes it worth mentioning. But it's small (roughly the difference between holding 84 and 87 times out of 100), it doesn't appear in any of the other eight markets, and free end-of-day FX data is known for patchy daily highs and lows. We're treating it as something to check again with better data, not something to trade.

Market by market

MarketLevel testsReal heldDecoy heldDifference2004–14 / 2015–now
EUR/USD10,91482.9%83.2%−0.3 pts−0.3 pts / −0.1 pts
GBP/USD11,11883.3%83.4%−0.1 pts+0.1 pts / +0.0 pts
USD/JPY10,53882.4%83.1%−0.6 pts−0.5 pts / −0.2 pts
AUD/USD9,76987.0%87.3%−0.3 pts−1.0 pts / +0.2 pts
USD/CAD11,03184.4%84.6%−0.2 pts−0.2 pts / +0.1 pts
USD/CHF11,10583.6%83.6%−0.0 pts−0.2 pts / +0.3 pts
NZD/USD10,06584.2%83.5%+0.7 pts+0.7 pts / +0.2 pts
US3011,06245.6%45.5%+0.1 pts−0.3 pts / +0.6 pts
NAS10010,73347.6%46.8%+0.8 pts+0.8 pts / +1.1 pts
SPX50010,90344.9%44.7%+0.2 pts−0.4 pts / +0.6 pts
UK10011,16244.2%44.1%+0.1 pts+0.3 pts / −0.0 pts
GER4010,88849.2%48.5%+0.7 pts+0.4 pts / +0.9 pts
Gold8,78646.3%46.0%+0.3 pts+0.5 pts / +0.3 pts
Silver6,15935.8%35.0%+0.8 pts+0.8 pts / +0.4 pts
US Oil11,06049.3%49.9%−0.6 pts−1.1 pts / −0.1 pts
What this means for you.
  • Pivots aren't magic lines. Price turns near them about as often as it turns near any level at that distance. What looks like "respect" on a chart is mostly the normal tendency for moves to fade towards the edges of a day's range.
  • They can still be useful reference points. A pivot tells you roughly how far price has stretched compared with yesterday. That's context, not a reason to expect a reversal.
  • Beware of the ones you remember. A level that held perfectly sticks in the mind. The ten that broke don't. That's exactly the bias this kind of test is designed to remove.
What this test doesn't prove.
  • It tests the close. Very short-term reactions during the day, like a quick bounce off R1 before a break, can't be measured with daily data.
  • It tests standard daily pivots. Weekly pivots and other formulas (Camarilla, Fibonacci) are different claims.
  • Futures prices are used for gold, silver and oil, and cash indices for the stock markets, as on our market pages.
Risk warning: CFDs and spread bets are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. Most retail accounts lose money when trading them. You should consider whether you understand how they work and whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money. Satdish provides education, not financial advice.
Data: Yahoo Finance daily open, high, low and close. Decoy levels: each level's distance from the open, measured in units of the previous day's range, shuffled across days 50 times. Re-run monthly.