Range Plan Framework
How a range plan turns a Smart Money Concepts read into levels you can act on, how every leg is tracked — and how to use the app.
A range plan covers one futures symbol in both directions: a long leg at the lower edge of a range and a short leg at the upper edge. Each leg names its zone, the exact rule that enters it, its stop and two targets, with the reasoning behind every level. Range plans are not predictions — they are decision frameworks written before the trade: where to enter, where to take profit, and where the idea is wrong.
Why Traders Use Range Plans
Most retail traders fail because they trade on impulse — entering without a plan, moving stops, and chasing price. A range plan removes the guesswork by fixing every parameter before the trade: the entry rule, the stop, both targets and the point where the setup is off.
Because every leg follows the same structure and is tracked the same way, results can be measured objectively: win rate, R-multiples and expectancy per leg, with no hindsight edits.
Anatomy of a Range Plan
Two Legs, One Range
A long at the demand below price and a short at the supply above it. Each leg trades on its own: entering one leaves the other in play, so both can be in a trade at once.
Zone and Entry Rule
The zone comes from higher-timeframe structure — an unfilled fair value gap, an order block, a break level. The entry is one of two rules: a limit order resting at the entry price, or a sweep & reclaim — price sweeps the trigger level (stage 1, no position yet), then a candle of the plan's timeframe closes back beyond the ARM level, and the leg enters at that close.
Stop
Every leg's stop is fixed by the plan, known in advance and kept from the entry to the exit. A limit leg has its plan stop; a sweep & reclaim leg's stop sits 0.25% beyond its sweep limit — the deepest sweep the setup accepts. A sweep deeper than the sweep limit breaks the setup before it ever enters.
Two Targets and a Mid
Every leg has two targets. T1 books the first part and moves the stop to breakeven (the entry); T2 closes the leg. A plan may add a mid target between T1 and T2: it books another part, the stop stays at breakeven, and T2 still closes the leg. A target counts only after the entry — price passing a leg's targets before it enters retires nothing.
Verdict: READY, ARMED, WATCH
READY and ARMED legs are limit entries — every condition but price location has passed. WATCH legs wait for the sweep and the reclaim close; the opposite edge of a backed side is always a WATCH leg.
Timeframe
Zones are read from the 1-hour up to the monthly chart. The plan's own timeframe (15m to 1D, usually 4H) is the one whose close arms a sweep & reclaim leg.
How a Plan Is Built and Tracked
Screen
The watchlist is screened for symbols trading at the near edge of an unfilled daily, weekly or monthly fair value gap or order block — where a plan is worth writing now.
Read the Structure
Binance futures candles from the 1-hour to the monthly chart are read for Smart Money Concepts structure — breaks of structure, changes of character, fair value gaps, order blocks and liquidity — with Planar AI. Structure comes first: a zone without it is not a setup.
Write the Plan
Each leg gets its zone, entry rule, stop, two targets (and, when a plan adds one, a mid between them) and the written reasoning: the market context, the trigger, what invalidates it and how to manage the trade once in. The levels are checked for order and geometry before the plan is accepted.
Publish
The plan is stored exactly as written — nothing recalculates or moves a level afterwards — and announced with one RANGE PLAN notification listing every leg.
Track Every Leg
Every 5 minutes each 1-minute candle since the last check is replayed in order for every leg: the sweep and ARM close or the limit fill, the stop, T1 (stop to breakeven), the mid when the leg has one, and T2. Each stage is a notification; each outcome counts in the accuracy statistics.
The Life of a Leg
A leg ends at T2, at its stop, or at breakeven after T1 or the mid (a partial win). Before its entry it can only be cancelled:
- Sweep too deep — the sweep runs past the deepest level the stop can hide behind; the setup is broken and never arms.
- Out of range — price leaves the range past the other leg's setup, beyond the level where that setup fails. A breakout ends both legs.
- Replaced — a new plan for the symbol supersedes a leg that has not entered; a leg in a trade is never replaced.
A target printing before the entry cancels nothing: price may be on its way to the other leg — the long playing out up to the short's zone — and can still come back to this one.
Smart Money Concepts Methodology
Smart Money Concepts (SMC) is a trading methodology that decodes how institutional traders — hedge funds, banks, and market makers — move price. Rather than following lagging indicators, SMC identifies the structural footprints institutions leave in the order flow.
Break of Structure (BOS)
Break of Structure occurs when price breaks above a previous swing high (bullish BOS) or below a previous swing low (bearish BOS). It confirms the existing trend direction and signals that institutional flow is still in control. BOS is the primary building block of SMC trend analysis.
Change of Character (CHoCH)
Change of Character is the first structural break in the opposite direction of the current trend. In an uptrend, CHoCH happens when price breaks below the most recent higher low. It signals that institutions may be repositioning and a trend reversal could be forming. CHoCH is often followed by a new BOS in the new direction.
Fair Value Gaps (FVG)
Fair Value Gaps are three-candle patterns where aggressive institutional buying or selling creates a visible gap between the first candle's wick and the third candle's wick. These gaps represent price imbalance — areas where orders were not fully filled. Price has a strong tendency to return to FVGs to rebalance; the unfilled part of a higher-timeframe gap is where a leg's zone usually sits.
Order Blocks
An order block is the last opposing candle before a significant move — the last bearish candle before a bullish move, or the last bullish candle before a bearish move. These mark zones where institutions accumulated or distributed positions. When price returns to an order block, it often reacts strongly because unfilled institutional orders remain at that level.
Liquidity and the Sweep
Liquidity refers to clusters of stop losses sitting above swing highs and below swing lows. Institutions need liquidity to fill large orders, so they engineer moves that trigger these stops before reversing. The sweep & reclaim entry is built on it: the leg waits for price to take the liquidity at its trigger and close back — a failed breakout — before it enters.
Example: BTCUSDT Range Plan
- Zone:
- $87,385.1 – $88,786
- Entry:
- sweep of $87,385.1, then a 4H close below $87,247.3
- Stop:
- $89,008
T1: $85,080 · T2: $82,832
- Zone:
- $81,472.6 – $82,832
- Entry:
- sweep of $82,282.8, then a 4H close above $82,832
- Stop:
- $80,209.7
T1: $85,224 · T2: $87,247.3
Why These Levels
With BTC near $83,400, the long sits at the lower edge: the unfilled halves of the daily and 4H bullish fair value gaps, the 4H change-of-character level and the weekly gap's fixed edge. Its trigger takes the sell-side liquidity under the 24 September low; a 4H close back above $82,832 shows the sweep did not continue.
The short sits at the upper edge: the unfilled rest of a January daily bearish gap under an untouched daily order block. Its trigger sweeps the equal highs at $87,247–87,385; a 4H close back under them is a failed breakout. It runs against the fresh bullish breaks, so it carries less confidence than the long.
Each leg trades on its own. The long's T2 stops under the short's zone, the short's T2 at the top of the long's — no target beyond the other edge. A sweep below $80,410.8 breaks the long and puts price out of the range for the short; a sweep above $88,786 does the same the other way.
Using the App
Planar runs inside Telegram as a Mini App, on any phone or desktop with nothing to install, and in any browser at app.planar.one, on the same account. Subscriptions are paid in Telegram Stars in the Mini App, or by card (Stripe) in the Mini App or on the web.
Open Planar.
@trading_scenarios_bot in Telegram, then Open App, or app.planar.one in a browser, signing in with Telegram or Google. Every new account starts with a free 3-week Premium trial.
Pick a symbol.
Every symbol on the watchlist is open on every plan. Favourites and search are in the picker.
Read the plan.
The card shows the range, then each leg with its status, zone, entry rule, stop, T1, the mid when it has one, and T2. Details opens the reasoning behind every level; History lists the symbol's past plans and how each leg ended.
Follow the legs.
A leg's status moves with price — waiting, stage 1, entered, T1, the mid, T2, or cancelled — and every stage is a push notification you can switch on or off per event in Settings.
In the app
Chart
Every leg's zone, entry, stop and targets drawn on live candles, with the plan's timeframes. The ⋯ sheet toggles the SMC layers — structure breaks, fair value gaps, order blocks, liquidity — and the trend-line tool.
AI chat Pro
Ask about the current plan and the structure behind it. The chat has the plan as context — on Premium, the symbol's live SMC structures too. Provider (Groq, OpenRouter or Google AI) is set in Settings.
Trading journal Premium
Log each trade with its entry, stop, target and the state of mind before it. Analytics: win rate, R-multiple, profit factor and expectancy; outcomes TP, SL, breakeven or manual close.
PineScript export Premium
A TradingView indicator (PineScript v6) with the plan's zones, triggers and ARM levels, stops, T1 and T2 (and a leg's mid, when it has one), and an alert condition for every stage. Copy it from the plan card, paste it into a new indicator.
Settings
- Notifications — which events push: a new plan, stage 1, the entry, the targets, the stop, volume alerts.
- Plan — Pro, Premium or Ultimate, after the free 3-week Premium trial every new account starts with; see Pricing. Manage or cancel there; access runs to the end of the paid period.
- API tokens — Ultimate: the Bearer tokens of the public API.
Glossary
- BOS
- Break of Structure — price breaks a previous swing high or low, confirming trend continuation.
- CHoCH
- Change of Character — the first structural break in the opposite direction, signalling a possible trend reversal.
- FVG
- Fair Value Gap — a three-candle imbalance where aggressive institutional orders left unfilled space that price tends to revisit.
- Order Block
- The last opposing candle before a strong move, marking a zone of institutional accumulation or distribution.
- Liquidity Sweep
- A move that takes the stop losses clustered above swing highs or below swing lows before reversing.
- Range Plan
- A symbol's plan: a long leg at the lower edge of a range and a short leg at the upper edge, each trading on its own.
- Zone
- The price range a leg trades from, set where higher-timeframe fair value gaps, order blocks and structure levels meet.
- Sweep & Reclaim
- An entry rule: price sweeps the trigger (stage 1), then a candle of the plan's timeframe closes back beyond the ARM level — the leg enters at that close.
- Limit
- An entry rule: a resting order at the entry price, filled when price trades through it.
- Stop
- The level that ends a leg as a loss; fixed by the plan and kept from the entry to the exit.
- T1, Mid, T2
- A leg's targets: T1 books the first part and moves the stop to breakeven, T2 closes the leg. A plan may add a mid between them: it books another part, the stop stays at breakeven.
- R:R
- Risk to reward — the distance from the entry to the stop against the distance from the entry to a target.
Public API Ultimate
Every plan and its legs — zone, entry rule, stop, targets and each leg's outcome — plus the SMC read and the accuracy statistics, as JSON over HTTPS. For your own dashboards, bots and backtests.
| Endpoint | Returns |
|---|---|
| GET /v1/symbols | The symbols with a plan |
| GET /v1/analysis/{symbol}/latest | The current plan: both legs, levels and reasoning |
| GET /v1/analysis/{symbol}/history | Past plans and how each leg ended |
| GET /v1/analysis/{id}/levels | A plan's levels and R:R |
| GET /v1/forecasts/active | Every leg in play and its stage |
| GET /v1/forecasts/statistics | Accuracy per symbol and period |
# The current BTCUSDT plan curl -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN" \ https://api.planar.one/v1/analysis/BTCUSDT/latest
Frequently Asked Questions
What data sources does Planar use?
Binance USDT-M futures candles, from the 1-minute chart the legs are tracked on to the monthly chart the zones are read from. The analysis behind each plan is prepared with Planar AI.
How often are plans updated?
A plan stays as written until a new one replaces it. It is revised when the market moves on: a leg cancelled before its entry, the plan finished, a newer break against a leg still waiting, or a week without revision. A plan is never replaced while one of its legs is in a trade. Price is checked every 5 minutes, every 1-minute candle in order.
What do READY, ARMED and WATCH mean?
READY and ARMED legs enter with a resting limit order at their entry price and a fixed stop. A WATCH leg waits for price to sweep its trigger and for a candle of the plan's timeframe to close back beyond its ARM level; it enters at that close, with the plan's stop just beyond its sweep limit.
What happens when price breaks out of the range?
A leg not yet entered is cancelled once price goes past the other leg's setup — beyond the level where that setup fails. A target printing before a leg's entry cancels nothing: price may be on its way to the other leg and can come back.
Can I use range plans for automated trading?
Yes. The Ultimate plan provides a REST API with every plan and its legs in JSON (zone, entry rule, stop, targets and each leg's outcome) at api.planar.one/v1.
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