14 January 2026 · Niran Chaiyasit
Where a swing high actually sits
A swing high is a bar with lower highs on both sides, not the highest wick you wish you had sold.
Students often plant a swing high on the bar they wish they had sold. The bar is obvious only in hindsight, and the mark moves every time a newer high appears. On the evening desk we use a stricter test, and we write it in the margin so the mark cannot drift.
The two-bar test
On a weekly chart, a swing high is a bar whose high is above the high of the bar before it and above the high of the bar after it. One neighbour is not enough. A single tall wick with no lower bar after it is still an unfinished push. We leave it unmarked until the following week closes.
The same test applies on the daily chart, with one extra caution. A daily swing inside a weekly push is a pause, not a change of the larger swing. If the weekly bar has not made a lower high on both sides, the daily mark is drawn lighter, in a harder pencil, and labelled as a minor pause in the margin.
Write the reason on the same evening
A mark without a sentence is a decoration. Under each swing high we ask for one line: which two bars confirm it, and whether the weekly chart agrees. If the sentence cannot be written, the mark comes off the sheet before the student leaves the table. That rule has saved more seats from a redrawn chart than any clever pattern name.
The following Tuesday, the sheet comes back. If price has printed a higher high, the old mark is not erased in shame. It is crossed once, dated, and left visible. A swing log is a record of what you believed on a given evening, not a cleaned picture of what later happened.