Constructing action-reaction swing targets and time stops

Confirm the reaction swing

A swing setup is treated as ready only after a short countertrend pause closes on its extreme and the next bar resumes the prior trend. That pause is the reaction swing, and the confirming bar marks it as the cycle midpoint.

The swing procedure is framed as a timing problem. Entries and exits are located from the chart's own structure rather than from an expanding stack of technical overlays.

Reuse the reverse count as the time stop

The holding window is obtained by counting bars backward from the reaction-swing high to the preceding swing low. The same number of bars is then counted forward from the reaction-swing low to a reversal date.

That reverse-count duration is the time stop, a precomputed holding window set before the overlay is completed. On a five-minute chart, a 17-bar reverse count is converted into an 85-minute time stop by multiplying bar count by bar length before the action-reaction overlay is added.

Draw the three-line overlay

Price scaffolding is drawn in three strokes. A center line is taken from the prior swing low through the exact midpoint of the reaction swing, splitting completed action from the projected reaction. An action line is drawn across that swing. A reaction line is drawn parallel to the action line where the forward count meets the center line.

The three lines form the action-reaction overlay. The reaction line is placed at the projected reversal date and is used as a price magnet.

Exit on the reaction line or the reversal date

If price reaches the reaction line before the projected reversal bar, the unused remainder of the time stop is not waited out. The early hit is treated as the exit.

Swing trading in this workflow is a single procedure. It enters only after a confirmed reaction swing and holds only until the projected reversal date, the reaction-line target, or a failed confirmation.

Lengthen the count for a later date

Lengthening the reverse count through an earlier swing low produces a later reversal date that can mark the end of the correction rather than the first swing high.

After a new reaction swing completes, the same reverse-count and parallel-line construction can be reapplied to project later reversal dates on a longer cycle.

Contrast with lagging cycle counts

Low-to-low cycle counts that arrive early, late, or not at all, and indicator stacks that fire after a move has started, are contrasted with this leading midpoint construction.