Inversion Fair Value Gap (IFVG)
A Fair Value Gap price has traded through, flipping polarity: the old support becomes resistance, and vice versa.
An Inversion Fair Value Gap, or IFVG, is a Fair Value Gap price has traded through instead of respecting. The gap fails in its original role and the zone flips polarity: a bullish FVG that gives way becomes resistance, a bearish FVG traded through becomes support.
The reasoning is the same as the breaker block’s, applied to a gap rather than an order block. A price zone has no intrinsic value: it is worth whatever participants did there. When it gives way, those who positioned in it are offside, and their need to get out at breakeven turns the zone into an obstacle in the other direction.
The distinction from an ordinary FVG is sharp and operational. An intact FVG is traded in the direction of the move that created it — you buy a bullish FVG. An IFVG is traded against that move: the bullish FVG failed, so you sell its retest. Confusing the two means systematically taking the wrong side.
How to spot it: first identify an FVG by the usual three-candle pattern. Then watch whether price crosses it entirely, with a clean close on the other side — a wick through the gap does not count. Once that crossing is confirmed, the zone stays on the chart, but its role is inverted.
The signal gains reliability when the crossing comes with displacement and a structure break in the same direction. An FVG that gives way slowly, in a directionless market, has not really failed: it dissolved. It is the violence of the crossing that shows one side was caught out.
How do you trade it? You wait for price to return into the old gap’s zone from the opposite side, and enter in the direction of the new polarity. The stop goes on the far side of the zone, which gives a clean invalidation point: if price trades back through, the inversion did not hold and the idea is dead.
The IFVG is especially useful at trend reversals, where the classic zones fall short. After a CHoCH, the old trend’s order blocks and FVGs are of little further use; the gaps it left behind, which price has just crossed, become the first workable zones in the new direction.
The classic mistake: declaring an inversion on a wick. Price spikes through the gap, comes straight back, and you flip your bias. A sweep that crosses an FVG without closing beyond it is still a sweep — and it is often the very move preceding a resumption in the original direction.
Second trap: accumulating IFVGs across the chart. Not every crossed gap deserves to become a watched zone. Keep only those whose crossing produced a structure break; the rest are scenery, and they make the chart unreadable.