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7Grade 7: Price Action Lab
Technical Analysis + Price Action · Indicator-Free Price Action

Reading raw market structure: HH, HL, LH, LL

Read market direction directly from the sequence of swing highs and swing lows, without any indicator.

3 min read+25 XPLesson 88 of 96
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Technical Analysis + Price Action

Indicator-Free Price Action

Lesson 88 of 9692%
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Lesson 88 of 96Technical Analysis + Price ActionIndicator-Free Price Action

Today's tiny win: make one idea click.

Read market direction directly from the sequence of swing highs and swing lows, without any indicator.

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Four labels that tell you everything

Strip every indicator off your chart and what is left? Candles. And when you zoom out, those candles form a pattern of bumps and dips. The bumps are swing highs. The dips are swing lows. The entire art of indicator-free trading starts with learning to label those bumps and dips correctly, because their sequence tells you the direction of the trend.

Wick points at a practice chart labeling each higher low HL and each higher high HH, showing how the swing sequence alone tells you the trend.Read the swingsPractice chartHLHH
Wick saysAn uptrend is a chain of higher highs and higher lows.

Four labels do all the work. Higher High (HH) means the latest swing high is above the previous swing high. Higher Low (HL) means the latest swing low is above the previous swing low. Lower High (LH) means the latest swing high is below the previous swing high. Lower Low (LL) means the latest swing low is below the previous swing low. That is it. Four labels.

Now the rule. An uptrend is a sequence of HH and HL. A downtrend is a sequence of LH and LL. As long as those sequences continue, the trend continues. When the sequence breaks, you have your first hint that the trend might be ending. In an uptrend, the structural break is when price fails to make a new HH and then breaks below the most recent HL. That is the moment the uptrend is no longer technically intact.

Wick points at a chalkboard saying HH plus HL is an uptrend, LH plus LL is a downtrend, and a break of the last HL is a warning, the core structure rules.Four labelsHH + HL = uptrendLH + LL = downtrendBreak of HL = warning
Wick saysHigher highs and lows mean up, and lower highs and lows mean down.

The honest difficulty is pivot identification. What counts as a swing high? On a noisy chart, a small wiggle of three candles might look like a swing, but it is too small to matter. A useful rule of thumb: a swing high is a candle whose high is higher than the candle to its left and the candle to its right, and that creates a visible bump on the timeframe you are trading. If you cannot see it without zooming in heavily, it is probably noise. Stay on the timeframe where structure is obvious.

Wick shows a green card saying swings you see clearly on your chart and a coral card saying tiny wiggles you must zoom to find, teaching honest pivot picking.Do thisSwings you seeclearly on yourchartNot thisTiny wiggles youmust zoom to find
Wick saysOnly count swings you can see clearly, because tiny wiggles are noise.

Recap: four labels (HH, HL, LH, LL) describe every trend on every market. Uptrend is HH plus HL. Downtrend is LH plus LL. The trend continues until the sequence breaks. No indicator required.

Knowledge check

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0 / 3 answered

1. Which sequence defines an uptrend in raw market structure?

2. When is an uptrend's structure first considered broken?

3. What is the most common honest difficulty when reading raw market structure?

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