Support and resistance on a PSX chart, with MCB

Support and resistance (support and resistance PSX; support aur resistance kaise lagayen) are prices where a share has repeatedly paused or turned: support below the current price, resistance above it. A trader marks them with a horizontal line through earlier highs and lows, a round number or the 52-week high and low, and treats each as a zone, not an exact line. Example: on five sessions between 14 May and 2 September 2026, MCB’s daily low stopped between Rs 396.00 and Rs 397.01, and none of those 75 sessions closed below Rs 397.00. On 7 September it closed at Rs 393.64. A level is a record of the past, not a promise.

What are support and resistance?

Support is a price at which buying has been strong enough, in the past, to stop a fall. Resistance is a price at which selling has been strong enough to stop a rise. StockCharts’ reference defines them as levels where demand or selling “is thought to be strong enough” to stop a move, and notes that broader ranges are better read as zones than as exact points. The words “is thought to be” matter. The chart does not show why buyers appeared. It shows only that the price turned there.

On a chart, a level is a horizontal line at one price. Its strength is a count: how many times the price came to it and turned, over how many sessions. A level touched once is a coincidence. A level touched five times over four months is a pattern, which still says nothing about the sixth time.

Where do traders find the levels?

Four sources are common. All four can be read from the bars alone.

Source	How it is found	A point to check on PSX
Prior swing highs and lows	Peaks and troughs that other bars did not exceed on either side	Use closes or highs and lows consistently, and say which
Round numbers	Prices such as Rs 100, 250 or 400 that many people quote	Whether it mattered is not measurable from bars alone
52-week high and low	The highest high and lowest low of the last year	Define the window: this post uses the last 249 daily bars
Prior closes	A close that began or ended a large move	The exchange’s price limit can set one day’s close

The last row has a PSX detail. A close at the daily price limit is the end of a permitted range, not a market-found level. The rule is in circuit breakers and upper and lower locks. The glossary of PSX terms explains the other words.

Why is a level a zone and not a line?

Prices do not turn at one exact number. Orders sit around a price, the bars have wicks, and a close can differ from the low by several rupees. A level drawn through one low looks precise, and it is only as precise as the low you picked.

MCB shows the difference. Between 14 May and 4 September 2026 (75 daily sessions), its lowest close was Rs 397.00, on 14 May. Its lowest intraday low was Rs 393.00, on 18 May. Two more lows stayed below the main band: Rs 393.80 on 15 July and Rs 394.00 on 20 July. A line at Rs 397 would have been crossed on those days by the wick and not by the close. A zone from Rs 393 to Rs 397 describes what happened better than any one line.

So draw a band, and decide beforehand whether your rule uses closes or wicks.

What did MCB’s Rs 397 zone do between May and October 2026?

The data is the one-year daily series of MCB from SuperX’s public API, 249 bars from 17 October 2025 to 16 October 2026. I chose MCB after scanning the one-year closes of the 100 KSE-100 constituents for repeated turning points near one price. It is among the clearest cases, not a typical share. Prices are adjusted for bonus shares, rights and splits, and not for cash dividends.

These five sessions had a low between Rs 396.00 and Rs 397.01 and a close between Rs 397.00 and Rs 398.83.

Date	Low	Close	Next session’s close
14 May 2026	396.20	397.00	398.88 (15 May)
10 June 2026	396.00	397.20	398.79 (11 June)
23 June 2026	396.00	398.83	403.75 (24 June)
14 July 2026	396.30	397.11	397.68 (15 July)
2 September 2026	397.01	397.91	398.24 (3 September)

On 7 September 2026, the low was Rs 392.00 and the close Rs 393.64, the first close below Rs 396 since 14 May. Since then there were 30 sessions to 16 October. Only four of them closed at or above Rs 396: Rs 398.84 on 8 September, Rs 397.36 on 18 September, Rs 398.42 on 21 September and Rs 396.34 on 22 September. The highest high was Rs 405.00 on 30 September. The close on 16 October 2026 was Rs 374.53, Rs 22.47 below the zone’s lowest close, and the lowest low was Rs 369.47 on 14 October. The MCB share page gives the same close: Rs 374.53, up 0.93% on the day.

Two facts keep this honest. First, MCB went ex-dividend for Rs 9 on 5 May and on 18 August 2026 (SuperX snapshot as of 9 October 2026), and the daily bars are not adjusted for cash dividends. The 18 August ex-date is inside the window, so levels drawn before it are about Rs 9 higher than a dividend-adjusted chart would show. Second, the zone is a description of five days. It did not cause the rebounds.

The 52-week range is itself a pair of levels. From the same 249 bars, MCB’s highest high was Rs 452.00 on 7 January 2026, and its lowest low was Rs 343.70 on 6 November 2025. The Rs 397 zone sat at 49% of that range, and the 16 October close at 28%.

Do levels hold? What the evidence says

Sometimes, in some markets, and not as a rule you can use blindly. Carol Osler of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York tested the support and resistance levels that six trading firms sent to clients in 1996 to 1998. She found that they were “quite successful in predicting intraday trend interruptions” in exchange rates. That study covers currencies and intraday moves, not PSX shares and daily closes. It supports the idea that levels are worth marking. It does not say a given level will hold, and this post does not say so either.

A common convention is role reversal: a broken support becomes a resistance, and the reverse. It is a convention. MCB’s zone was broken on 7 September 2026. Whether Rs 397 acts as a ceiling in the weeks after is a question the chart answers later, and no one can read it in advance.

How do I draw support and resistance in SuperX Charts?

SuperX Charts is a free PSX terminal with 72 drawing tools in Pro, which needs no account. The drawing guide explains each step. For a level:

1. Open MCB on a one-year daily chart.
2. Click the Lines family button on the drawing rail, or press Alt+H for the Horizontal line. It is one price across the whole pane, labelled on the price axis.
3. Click once at the price. The hint line under the chart says how to place the armed tool.
4. For a ceiling that begins at a particular bar and runs on to the right, use the Horizontal ray (Alt+J) instead.
5. For a zone, arm the Rectangle from the Shapes family (Alt+B) and click two corners, one at each edge of the band.
6. To set a price exactly, select the drawing, click Settings and open Coordinates. The price steps by the exchange’s tick.
7. Turn on Magnet to snap a point to the open, high, low or close of a bar. Weak snaps within 12 pixels.

Pro also has Auto draw, whose Support & resistance tool draws horizontal levels “where the price turned several times”, on request only. It draws only where its tests pass, and otherwise says “Not enough evidence — nothing drawn”. Each automatic drawing is labelled “An automatic drawing from past prices — not financial advice.”

How do I set an alert on a level?

An alert tells you when a close crosses the line, so you need not watch the screen.

1. Draw a horizontal line, a ray or a channel, and click it to select it.
2. Click the bell in the bar over it. The alert fires when the close crosses the line.
3. Or open Alerts (press A), choose Price level, type the price, choose rises to, falls to or crosses, either way, and click Set alert.

On a daily chart, a wick through the line does not fire a line alert, because it reads the close. That matches the zone idea above: decide whether you care about wicks. A tab checks the alert while it is open. The server checks it too if you turn on Notify me when the tab is closed, and the alerts guide lists what a closed tab can and cannot do.

What does a level not tell you?

It does not tell you the next price. It does not tell you why buyers appeared. It does not adjust itself for a cash dividend, as the MCB example showed, and bonus shares need adjusted bars: see bonus shares on PSX. A drawing keeps its price and date when you change the interval, because each point of a drawing is a time and a price.

Check your own chart against the longer story. The MCB chart page here plots its daily closes, the MCB stock page shows its fundamentals, and the dividend history shows the ex-dates that shift a level. Other banks work the same way: the HBL page read Rs 290.42 and the UBL page read Rs 412.53 on 16 October 2026. How to choose between free charting tools compares where else you can draw one for free, and TradingView vs SuperX Charts covers the larger rival.

Frequently asked questions

What is support and resistance in simple words?

Support is a price where a share has stopped falling before. Resistance is a price where it has stopped rising before. Both are drawn as horizontal lines or bands through past highs and lows.

Is support a line or a zone?

A zone is the better description. MCB’s closes held at Rs 397.00 or above between 14 May and 4 September 2026, while its intraday lows reached Rs 393.00.

Does a support level always hold?

No. MCB’s zone near Rs 397 was broken on 7 September 2026, when it closed at Rs 393.64. A level describes past turns and does not promise a future one.

How do I draw a horizontal line in SuperX Charts?

Press Alt+H for the Horizontal line and click once at the price. Use the Horizontal ray (Alt+J) if you want it to start at a bar and run right.

Can SuperX Charts alert me when a price crosses a level?

Yes. Select the drawn line and click the bell, or set a Price level alert in the Alerts panel. A line alert fires when the close crosses the line.

Education, not investment advice.