Market Structure
Swings and the HH/HL grammar, BOS/CHoCH, ranges, and Dow foundations.
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Market structure is the grammar of swings: higher highs and higher lows, the breaks and character changes that end them, and the ranges in between. Its foundations are Charles Dow’s trend definitions from the 1890s; its modern dialects (BOS, CHoCH, internal versus external structure) power most price-action systems in the Library.
The family is built in four parts. Swing grammar defines the units: swing highs and lows, the bar-count rule behind a pivot, fractals and zigzags, and the labels that turn a series of swings into a trend statement. Structure events are what happens to those swings: a break of structure continues the trend, a change of character is the first break against it, and failed raids, impulse and corrective legs, and measured moves describe the path in between. Range anatomy covers sideways markets, from the trading range itself to the deviations and false breakouts at its edges. Dow Theory, widely regarded as the oldest codified branch of Western technical analysis, anchors the rest.
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Swing grammar
The units of structure: swing highs and lows, the pivot-strength rule that defines them, fractals and zigzags, and the labeling system that turns a series of swings into a trend statement.
Structure events
What happens to the swings: with-trend breaks of structure, the first break against the trend, failed raids on prior swing points, and the impulse and corrective legs a trend is made of.
Range anatomy
Sideways markets: the trading range, the deviations and false breakouts at its edges, breakout-pullback continuation, and the Wyckoff-derived reading of ranges as accumulation or distribution.
Dow Theory
Charles Dow’s principles of how market trends form, persist, and reverse: the foundation the rest of this family builds on.