Read the story behind the candles.

1) Start by defining the phase

Every chart is doing one of three things: trending, ranging, or transitioning between the two. Your first job is not to find an entry. It is to label the phase correctly. A trader who mistakes a range for a trend usually buys resistance or sells support. A trader who mistakes a trend for a range usually fades momentum that still has room to continue.

The cleanest way to do this is simple: mark the last two meaningful swing highs and the last two meaningful swing lows. If both are stair-stepping upward, you have bullish structure. If both are stair-stepping downward, you have bearish structure. If they overlap and keep returning to the same area, you likely have a range.

2) Read high timeframe first, execution timeframe second

Structure should be mapped top-down. Start with H4 or H1 to understand the dominant path of price, then drop to M15 or M5 only to refine timing. If you reverse that process, the lower timeframe noise will dominate your decision-making.

• Mark the last impulse leg on H4 or H1.
• Note whether pullbacks are shallow, orderly, or aggressive.
• Identify the nearest invalidation zone where your higher-timeframe bias would be wrong.

3) Focus on meaningful swing points, not every candle wiggle

Newer traders over-label charts. The goal is not to mark every tiny high and low. It is to isolate the swing points that actually changed direction, trapped traders, or created a visible reaction. If a level would not stand out to another trader at first glance, it probably is not a major structure point.

A useful rule: if you can only see the swing after zooming in and staring for a minute, it is probably too minor to anchor your bias.

4) Expansion and compression tell you what comes next

Expansion means price is moving with conviction: larger candles, cleaner breaks, and little overlap. Compression means price is tightening, reactions are smaller, and the market is storing energy. Compression often happens before a breakout, but it does not tell you direction by itself. You still need to see where liquidity sits and which side is more vulnerable to a sweep.

• Expansion: trend continuation or a real regime shift if it breaks a major swing.
• Compression: warning that a false break or stop run is possible before the true move begins.

5) Use zones, not single lines

Markets do not respect perfect pixel levels. Treat support and resistance as narrow zones built from repeated reactions, prior closes, wick clusters, and session highs/lows. This gives price enough room to behave naturally and stops you from entering too early just because price touched a line.

6) Liquidity sweeps matter more than obvious breakouts

A common structure pattern is the sweep: price trades through a recent high or low, triggers breakout orders and stops, then quickly returns inside the prior range. That reclaim tells you the market used that area for liquidity rather than acceptance. In practice, sweeps are often more informative than a standard breakout candle.

The key question is what happens after the level is taken. If price cannot hold above the broken high in a bullish breakout, the move may be a trap. If price sweeps a low, reclaims the range, and starts printing higher lows, buyers may be taking control.

7) A real break usually needs a retest

Chasing the first candle through a level produces a lot of poor trades. A stronger process is to wait for two events: a decisive close through the level and a retest that holds. The retest is where you learn whether the market truly accepted the new price area or just spiked into it.

• Look for a close beyond structure, not just a wick through it.
• Wait to see if price respects the broken area as support or resistance.
• If the retest fails immediately, treat the break as suspect.

8) Session timing changes the quality of structure

Structure shifts during London and New York sessions generally carry more weight because liquidity is deeper and participation is broader. A breakout printed in a dead session can still work, but it needs more confirmation. This is one reason why many failed retail breakouts happen during quiet hours and then reverse once real volume comes in.

9) A practical workflow from top-down bias to entry

1. Mark H4/H1 trend and the most recent major swing high and low.
2. Define whether price is in expansion, pullback, or range.
3. Identify the nearest liquidity pools above and below current price.
4. Drop to the execution timeframe and wait for either a sweep-and-reclaim or a break-and-retest.
5. Place invalidation beyond the structure that proves the idea wrong, not at an arbitrary distance.

10) Common mistakes

• Buying the middle of a range because one bullish candle looked strong.
• Calling every wick a break of structure without waiting for a close.
• Ignoring session timing and treating all breaks as equal.
• Using one level without checking whether higher timeframe structure points in the opposite direction.