Quarterly swing chart construction and trend duration

Read the quarterly swing as a duration gate

Editorial reading: TradersWeek treats the quarterly Swing chart as a duration-gated trend-state machine. First construct the swing from prior-quarter extremes. Then withhold a regime-change call until historical bull and bear time spans have elapsed.

Editorial note: Gann angles and a Trendline sit in the same pattern set, but they do not draw this swing and they do not set the duration gate. The archive workflow below uses price extremes, the swing sequence, and elapsed time.

Construct the swing from prior extremes

A quarterly swing turns up from an extreme low when the average rises above the prior quarter's highest intradaily reading and stays up until price falls below a prior quarter's intradaily low.

A yearly swing turns up when price exceeds the prior year's highest intradaily reading. It turns down only when price breaks the prior year's lowest intradaily reading.

If a decline never breaks the prior year's intradaily low, the move is classified as a correction inside an ongoing bull market rather than a new bear market.

Classify the main trend from the sequence

The main trend is up when the swing sequence makes higher bottoms then higher tops. The main trend turns down when the sequence traces lower tops then lower bottoms.

Withhold a regime change until time has elapsed

The shortest true bull markets in the reviewed record lasted 379 to 396 days, so a 150-day advance is not classified as a completed bull market.

A decline must last at least 222 days to qualify as a true bear market. A 43-day drop is treated as too short to change the regime.

Medium bull markets cluster near two years, with a cited normal span of roughly 730 days and a medium-length band of 520 to 820 days.

Treat a turn as a hypothesis

A Swing chart turn is not itself a buy or sell signal.

An upturn is treated as a buy hypothesis only in an established bull market, or when a bear market has already run a standard time span near termination.

A downturn is treated as a sell hypothesis only when the main trend is already down and the bear market has not yet reached a standard duration, or when an established bull market has already run a standard span near a final high.

Long bull markets and a second downturn

Long bull markets are constructed as two or three swing legs separated by brief corrections. If the first quarterly downturn does not mark the real bear onset, the second downturn typically does.