Journal
Marking a swing high without chasing the wick
A daily bar that spikes and closes back inside the range is not automatically a new swing. Here is how we decide on paper during Tuesday class.
In the Samaedam room we still start with a ruler. Students arrive wanting to call every upper wick a swing high because a social-media chart did the same that morning. The wick is information. It is not automatically the turn.
A swing high, as we use the phrase, is a daily high that is higher than the highs of the bars around it and that holds as a reference after at least two subsequent sessions have failed to take it out on a closing basis. The 'around it' window is not a magic number of bars. On a quiet SET industrial it may be three sessions. On a US large-cap that reports mid-week it may be five. We write the candidate in pencil, then wait for closes.
Chasing the wick looks like this: the bar prints a long upper shadow, you sell or fade immediately, and the next session opens back through your line. You were trading the shadow, not the swing. In class we mark the high of the bar, then we mark the close. If the close sits in the lower half of the range, we treat the shadow as rejection worth noting — and we still do not relocate the swing until neighbouring bars confirm.
Homework from week one asks for two names only. On each chart, circle three candidate highs from the last six months. Write beside each whether the following two closes held below that high. If they did not, cross the candidate out. The surviving marks are the swings we will use in week four when we place invalidation.
Traders watching US names from Bangkok have an extra delay. The cash session ends while this city is asleep. You will often see the wick on the 04:00 print and feel you must act before Europe opens. For a swing hold of several days, that feeling is usually the wick talking. Wait for the daily close, mark it at breakfast, and decide whether the candidate still deserves the pencil.