Structure reading assumes a trend exists. Recognising when one does not is what keeps the method honest. This free lesson covers: Most of the time, nothing is trending, What a range looks like, Trend or range?, Why breaks mislead in a range, A break inside a range, The boundaries are the useful part, What to expect at the edge, When a range becomes a trend, Breakout or fakeout?, Put it together.
Market Structure · Learn · Step 1 of 10
Markets spend a large share of their time going nowhere in particular — chopping inside a band, with no reliable sequence of higher highs or lower lows.
Every tool in the previous three lessons assumes a trend exists. Applying them to a range produces confident-looking reads of noise.
Going deeper
Markets are widely estimated to range far more often than they trend, though the exact proportion depends entirely on the timeframe and how you define each. The practical implication holds regardless: trend tools are being applied to non-trending conditions most of the time.
US30 has a pronounced tendency to range during the Asian session and through the hours before the New York open, then expand once US participants arrive. Knowing which condition you are in matters more on this instrument than on many others.
A close outside the boundary that then holds on a retest, followed by structure forming in the new direction. A single close outside is not enough.
That is a method question rather than a right-or-wrong one. What matters is knowing which condition you are in, because the same setup means different things in each.