Trend and structure

Before any indicator, learn to describe structure in words. An uptrend is a sequence of higher highs and higher lows: each rally exceeds the last, and each pullback stops above the previous dip. A downtrend is the mirror image — lower highs and lower lows. A range is neither: highs stall around the same ceiling and lows bounce off the same floor.

That description sounds trivially simple, and that is exactly its power. It is objective. Two traders looking at the same chart will usually agree on where the swing highs and lows are, which means you can write rules around structure that you can actually follow tomorrow. Compare that with "the market looks bullish", which means nothing you can test.

The moments that matter are structural breaks. When an uptrend that has been making higher lows suddenly makes a lower low, something changed: sellers took ground they had not held before. That is not a signal to reverse blindly, but it is a signal to stop assuming the old trend and to demand more evidence before buying the next dip.

"The market looks bullish" is not a rule. "Price made a higher high above 1.0980" is one you can still follow tomorrow morning.

Ranges deserve as much respect as trends. Most currency pairs spend a large share of their time going sideways, and strategies built purely for trends bleed money in those weeks. Knowing which regime you are in tells you which of your rules should be switched on — and, just as importantly, when the honest answer is to place no trade at all.

Practise this with no indicators on the chart at all. Mark the last six swing highs and six swing lows on a daily chart, then write one sentence: uptrend, downtrend, or range. Do it for ten pairs. You will be reading structure faster than most people read an oscillator.