STH / ITH / LTH
A hierarchy of highs — short, intermediate and long term — that ranks liquidity by significance rather than by age.
STH (Short-Term High), ITH (Intermediate-Term High) and LTH (Long-Term High) describe three tiers of highs, ranked not by how long ago they formed but by how many times price has already come back to them without breaking them. The same vocabulary exists on the low side: STL, ITL, LTL.
An STH is a minor high, formed by only a handful of candles, that has not yet been retested. An ITH is an STH that has already survived at least one return of price without breaking — it has earned credibility. An LTH is the high that has withstood the most returns: it is the highest-standing reference on the structure being read.
This hierarchy answers a precise question: not all liquidity is worth the same. A freshly formed STH pulls in far fewer stop orders than an LTH that has been watched for weeks. Ranking highs this way, rather than by their sheer height on the chart, lets you anticipate which one the market will actually reach for first.
How to spot them: start from the most recent high and work backward. As long as a high has not been retested, it stays an STH. The moment price returns to touch it without breaking it, it gets promoted to ITH. If it withstands several successive returns and frames the chart over a much wider window, it becomes an LTH. Promotion happens through the test of retests, not by decree.
The underlying logic: every time a high is tested without breaking, new sellers position there and new buyers place their stop just above it. The high accumulates liquidity with each pass. An LTH is therefore not simply "older" — it is objectively more loaded with orders than an STH that just formed.
How do you use this in a trade? The hierarchy works as a priority map for the draw on liquidity: with a bullish bias, the market generally consumes STHs before going after ITHs, and ITHs before LTHs. Targeting an LTH while several STHs sit between price and that target risks getting stopped out well before, on one of those intermediate highs.
The classic mistake: confusing "old" with "important". A high that is months old but has never been retested since it formed stays an STH under this definition — age alone does not earn it ITH or LTH status.
Second trap: ignoring the reading timeframe. An LTH on a 15-minute chart can be an insignificant STH on the daily. The hierarchy only makes sense relative to one reference timeframe at a time — exactly like market structure itself.