Market structure · Beginner · 4 min read
Market structure: swing highs, swing lows and trend
How to read a trend from swing points: higher highs and higher lows, or lower highs and lower lows.
Every Smart Money Concepts (SMC) idea starts here. Before order blocks or fair value gaps, you need to say one thing about a chart: is price going up, going down, or going nowhere? SMC answers with swing points, not with indicators.
What a swing point is
A swing high is a candle whose high is above the candles around it: a little peak. A swing low is a little valley. Our code uses 3 candles on each side; on a chart you do the same by eye.
- 80 real 4h candles of BTC/USDT · Crypto (perpetual futures) · 2026-06-19 → 2026-07-02. The code found this example, not us: it is the most recent one in our data.
- Swing highs: a candle whose high is above the 3 candles on each side. Each dot is one.
- Swing lows: the mirror image, a low below the 3 candles on each side.
- Compare each swing with the one before: HH = higher high, LH = lower high, HL = higher low, LL = lower low.
- Reading: the last high is HH and the last low is LL. They disagree: no clean trend, a range.
Reading the trend
Compare each swing with the one before it:
- Higher high (HH) and higher low (HL): buyers push further each time. Uptrend.
- Lower high (LH) and lower low (LL): sellers win each swing. Downtrend.
- A mix: no clean trend. SMC traders call it a range and usually wait.
Flip the cards
Tap a card to flip it
Why it matters
Every later concept is defined from these points: a break of structure breaks a swing, a liquidity sweep takes out a swing, an order block sits before a break. Get the swings wrong and everything after is wrong.
Quick check
Price makes a higher high, then a lower low. What is the structure?
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Education about how markets and tests work. Not financial advice.