What are Swing Points? And what are they used for?

Swing points can be used for many purposes. Drawing Fibonacci Retracements and Fibonacci Expansions, trailing stops, defining support and resistance levels, and so on.

On this page, I will explain how you can define a swing point so that it makes sense.

Swing Points

A Swing Point is a chart pattern that indicates a reversal in the trend. You can find this chart pattern on any time frame as it is a basic price pattern on any chart.

• A Swing High is the highest point on the chart just before prices start on a swing down.
• A Swing Low is the lowest point on the chart just before prices start on a swing up.

What does it look like? Here’s a picture:

Swing Points are sometimes also known as Pivot Swing Points, as they are “pivots” where the markets turn from a downtrend to an uptrend and vice versa.

Pivot Swing Low

From the picture on the right, you can see the first candle makes a low. The second candle makes a lower low, but the third candle makes a higher low. There is no follow through in the downtrend. Instead, buyers have come into the market and are now moving the price higher.

Notice how the third candle breaks the high of the second candle. This indicates not only have prices found buying support, there are enough buyers to push prices above the previous candle’s high.

This will be a useful thing to note because sometimes, prices hit a low and then consolidate within the second candle. When this happens, be wary of taking this as a pivot swing point. Until the second candle’s high has been broken by higher prices, the market could just be taking a breather before continuing on its downtrend.

In the picture to the left, the third candle is price consolidating within the second candle.

To have a confirmation that it is indeed a pivot swing high, sometimes you might want to wait for the second candle’s high to be broken. By waiting for the high to be broken, it is another sign that prices have set in a pivot swing low.

Pivot Swing High

From the picture on the right, you can see the first candle made a high. The second candle makes a higher high, but the third candle makes a lower high. There is no follow through to the upside. Instead, sellers have come into the market and are now moving prices lower.

Notice how the third candle breaks the low of the second candle. This indicates that not only have sellers come into the market, but there are enough sellers to push the prices below the second candle’s low.

Similar to the Pivot Swing Low, this will be helpful to note when prices sometimes don’t make a higher high, or lower low. Prices could just remain within the high and low of the second candle, pausing for the moment before moving higher.

By waiting for the low of the second candle to be broken, you have extra confirmation that enough sellers have come to push prices down.

Pivot Swing Point Examples

In actual trading, sometimes you get really “perfect” pivot points, while at other times they can be just so messy. Here are some examples to illustrate this fact.

Here’s a nice Pivot Swing Low on the EURUSD 30 min chart:

Here’s a messy Pivot Swing Low in the EURUSD H4 chart:

Over time, as you see more charts you will start to naturally pick out swing highs and swing lows. When they correspond with candlestick patterns, support and resistance levels, technical indicators and so on, they can provide excellent entry points when you are swing trading with the trend.

This is a basic chart pattern that will be very useful to learn, because it is used in quite a few areas of chart trading.