What Is a Liquidity Void? Three Definitions, One Test

A liquidity void is the area a fast, one-way price move leaves behind, where price covered ground without pausing to trade back through it. That is the definition used below, and the same two words also get used for two other things: an area defined by how little was actually traded in it, and a market condition about how your own orders fill.

Only one of those three can be settled on a price chart, so two traders can argue about a liquidity void for an hour while looking at the same candles and both be right about their own definition.

What is a liquidity void in forex?

On a price chart, a liquidity void is the price range covered by a run of strong one-direction candles that leave no retracement behind them. innercircletrader.net publishes a test, marking the price range "covered by the displacement candles where wicks do not overlap" and asking for "multiple consecutive large-body candles whose wicks do not overlap the prior candle's range".

Published definitions split three ways: a chart object you can box, an area defined by low traded activity, and a condition of the market. Most of the field sits in the first group. Here is how each source words it.

Source	Date on the page	What it says a liquidity void is
innercircletrader.net	April 24, 2024, Last Updated May 8, 2026	A multi-candle chart object. "Unlike a single 3-candle fair value gap, a liquidity void can span multiple consecutive candles and may contain two or more fair value gaps inside it."
tradingfinder.com	Modified Apr 14, 2026	The same container. Candles "formed with long bodies and without intermediate retracements", and "Each liquidity void usually contains several consecutive FVGs."
ghosttraders.co	September 19, 2022	"any area on the chart where price moved rapidly in one direction, forming large candlesticks with minimal trading activity on either side."
fxopen.com	24 Mar 2026	Defined by activity, against liquidity zones: "Liquidity zones = high trading activity (support/resistance)", "Liquidity voids = low activity (fast price moves)".
fxssi.com	March 24, 2022	A price jump. "sudden changes in price that occur in forex when the price jumps from one level to another, without enough liquidity between the originating price level and the final price level."
theforexgeek.com	Published: June 26, 2026	A market condition. "A liquidity void is a temporary absence or significant reduction in market liquidity for a particular currency pair," leading to "increased slippage" and "wider spreads".

tradingfinder.com belongs with the chart-object group but explains the void in terms of traded volume as well.

Liquidity void vs fair value gap: the same thing or not?

Not the same thing. The void is the larger area and the fair value gap is a specific three-candle pattern that can sit inside it. ghosttraders.co says: "A Fair Value Gap is a specific type of liquidity void defined by the exact three-candle pattern. All FVGs are liquidity voids, but not all liquidity voids qualify as FVGs." innercircletrader.net says the same from the other direction, that a void "may contain two or more fair value gaps inside it".

Some definitions of the void never mention the gap at all, so a trader who arrives with the fair value gap vocabulary can land on an explanation that never touches the term they already know. The three-candle pattern has its own rules and its own argument about fills, and they are a separate subject.

Is a liquidity void a gap?

It depends which of the three definitions you took. The ones built on a run of candles describe candles that printed and traded, so the area sits inside bars on your chart rather than in blank space. fxssi.com instead defines it as price jumping "from one level to another", and its own summary says voids "appear on the chart as physical voids in prices or abnormally long candlesticks", which covers both a jump and a long bar in one sentence.

fxssi.com also sorts voids into four types: common, exhaustion, breakout and runaway. The blank space between one session's close and the next session's open is a different subject with its own rules, so keep the two apart in your notes.

How do you mark a liquidity void on a chart?

Box the run from the first candle of the move to the last, then check the published tests against it. Some of those tests you can settle with your own eyes, and some you cannot.

What you can check on price alone:

Whether the candles run in one direction without an intermediate retracement.
Whether each candle's wick stays clear of the prior candle's range. innercircletrader.net's test is binary: wicks do not overlap.
Where the box edges sit, and where the midpoint falls.

What price alone will not settle:

Whether little was actually traded inside that range. That is what fxopen.com's definition rests on, and part of tradingfinder.com's explanation, and it is a question about volume rather than price.
How many of the candle bodies count as "long". The sources do not put a number on it, so that threshold is yours to choose and write down.

Do liquidity voids always get filled?

No, and the published wording does not agree on how often. One source even disagrees with itself inside the same article.

fxssi.com says in its body that "The peculiar thing about liquidity voids is that they almost always fill up" and closes with "these voids tend to be filled, no matter how long it takes". Its own types section, above that summary, says of the four types that "only two tend to get filled quickly", that exhaustion voids "hardly ever get filled on time", and that runaway voids do not fill on time either.
innercircletrader.net: "No — it is not necessary for price to fill every liquidity void" and "Some voids stay unfilled for weeks."
tradingfinder.com: "Although a full fill of the void is not guaranteed, the market usually returns at least to its midpoint."
ghosttraders.co: "The market tends to revisit and fill these areas over time."

None of those statements arrives with a sample, a period or a method behind it. So the fill rule is a decision you make rather than a fact you inherit. A full return to the far edge, a touch of the midpoint, and any entry into the box at all are three different rules, and they will give you three different results on the same stretch of history.

What is consequent encroachment?

Consequent encroachment, or CE, is the name used for the 50% level of the area, the midpoint. It gets attached to two different areas.

innercircletrader.net marks it on the void: "Mark the consequent encroachment. The 50% midpoint of the void". ghosttraders.co attaches it to the three-candle pattern instead: "Consequent Encroachment is when price fills a fair value gap by exactly 50%", which it also calls the Mean Threshold of the FVG. A void and a gap sitting inside that void have different midpoints, so those are two different lines on the same chart. Write down which one your rule means before you test it.

Which of the three definitions can you actually test?

The chart-object one, if price history is all you have.

The chart-object definition is built from candle direction, wick overlap and box edges. All three are visible on any price chart, so a rule written on them can be checked bar by bar. Fair Value Gaps, a built-in under Standard and the Smart Money & ICT heading in the Indicators menu, marks the three-candle gaps inside a run, which covers tradingfinder.com's reading that a void holds several of them. It draws no void box, and with Auto Threshold on by default it skips gaps whose middle candle is small, so boxing the run is still yours.
The activity definition needs to know how much traded. A ChartLabs chart does carry volume: the legend shows the volume of the bar under your cursor, and a Volume indicator can be added in its own pane under price, off by default. Volume by price is built in too: Visible Range Volume Profile, under Standard and the Volume heading, shows which rows of the range on screen saw little volume, and its Row Size 24 means 24 rows across that range, not a price step. On forex both read the same volume series as the rest of the chart, Dukascopy's indicative volume summed over each bar, which is a relative measure of activity rather than traded size. No chart will tell you whether a given range counts as low activity, because nobody publishes a threshold. If your rule turns on volume, set that threshold yourself and apply it the same way to every candidate.
The market-condition definition is about slippage and spread at the moment your order fills. Historical candles do not record what your fill would have cost in a thin market, so a chart cannot settle it.

How do you step a liquidity void through your own history?

Write the rule down before you reveal the first candle, then step the chart forward one bar at a time so the box gets marked before you know whether price came back. Marking it afterwards is a memory rather than a test.

Pick the stretch of history you will step through, and fix it before you start. ChartLabs session setup can pick random dates by length and period, or you can hand-pick a range, which is the difference between testing a period and shopping for one.
Write the rule in full: how many candles make a run, your wick overlap test, how you set the box edges, whether the midpoint is part of the rule, what counts as a fill, and how many bars you give it before you call it unfilled.
Step forward bar by bar. Mark the box when the last candle of the run closes, not when price returns to it.
Record the candidate before anything else happens, including the ones that never fill. Those are the half of the sample that disappears if you only log the ones that worked.
Review each one afterwards with the markup you had at the time, rather than from memory.

ChartLabs is a manual backtesting platform, and that loop is what it is for: candles built from cleaned tick data from Dukascopy, stepped one bar at a time, with practice trades placed by hand. The record stays on the trade rather than in a separate document. There is a Notes column in the Orders panel and a note button on the chart while a trade is open, notes come through in the CSV export, and the panel shows up to five tags per trade.

What should you record per candidate?

Enough that two voids from different months are comparable. A minimum set:

Symbol, timeframe and the date of the last candle in the run.
How many candles the run contained, and whether your wick overlap test passed.
The box high and low, and the midpoint.
Whether price returned at all, and how far: no return, partial, midpoint, or the full far edge.
How many bars until that happened.
Whether a fair value gap sat inside the box, if your rule cares.
What you did, and what it cost.

The bar count is easy to leave out. A void that filled nine bars later and a void that filled nine months later are both "filled" under a rule that never mentions time.

What goes wrong when people test this by hand?

Marking the box after the fill is already on screen. A void you only noticed because price came back is a void selected by its outcome.

Four more worth watching:

Changing the overlap test partway through, usually to rescue a run of candles that nearly qualifies.
Using the midpoint as the fill on some candidates and the far edge on others.
Dropping the unfilled candidates out of the log, which is the same selection problem in a quieter form.
Reading "usually" or "almost always" as a measurement. No sample sits behind either word.

If this is your first structured test, our beginner's guide to backtesting a strategy covers the loop itself, manual backtesting builds better traders explains why stepping bar by bar teaches things a report cannot, and the forex backtesting guide covers sessions, spread and pair behaviour.

Try it on your own history

Pick one definition, write the rule down, and step a stretch of history bar by bar before you judge it. You can do that on historical forex, index, commodity and crypto data: start your free trial. No card needed to start.