Journal · 14 May 2026
Where a swing high sits on the daily
A peak is not a swing high until the daily on both sides has failed to better it. The desk marks that turn and leaves the smaller crests alone.
On the preparation desk a swing high is a specific object. It is a daily peak with lower highs on both sides, far enough apart that a multi-day hold would actually notice it. A tall candle in the middle of a climb is not automatically one. If the next day and the day after both print higher, the peak was only a pause.
Traders often arrive with every crest circled. The page then reads as weather rather than structure. Before any circle goes on, we ask whether price has already turned away from that high and whether the turn still sits inside the hold you named. A high from eighteen months ago can still matter. A high from last Tuesday often does not, unless the whole swing is that young.
The pencil test we use is simple. Cover the chart with a card and reveal it from the left. When a high appears, do not mark it. Wait until later bars have had a chance to exceed it and have not. The mark goes on only after that refusal. Doing this slowly in the room is the point of the hour; doing it quickly at midnight is how extra circles return.
Two swing highs close together usually mean the frame is too fine for the hold. If you plan to sit for three weeks, a pair of peaks three days apart is noise inside the weekly turn. We either step out to the weekly sheet or we keep the higher of the two and erase the other. Keeping both “for context” is how the page fills up again before the week is over.
The sheet records the swing high in words as well as on the paper: the approximate region, why it still governs, and what would retire it. A later close beyond it retires it. A wick through it does not, unless you decided in the session that wicks count. That decision is written down so you do not relitigate it on a nervous afternoon.
None of this chooses the trade. It only decides which peak is allowed to stay on a chart you will look at while a hold is open. If you want the same habit shown on a shared page before you book the private hour, the structure evening spends its first half on this and nothing else.