Hand-plotted point-and-figure trendlines and Wyckoff counts

Trend as a posted ledger

Editorial interpretation: treat trend as a posted ledger instead of a story. A point-and-figure column either clears the last high or files a high-pole warning. A trendline says whether that case is still live. Wyckoff-style hand posting keeps the hypothesis cheap to enlarge or abandon. This reading is editorial and is not attributed to the archive.

The working sheet is a point-and-figure chart, a column chart of X and O boxes that records only reversals large enough to change direction, so each print is either above a prior high or below a prior low.

When a buy or sell prints

On a point-and-figure chart, a buy is recorded when price prints above a prior column high, including double-top, triple-top, or quadruple-top structures. A double-top buy occurs when an X column exceeds the high of the previous X column, and the same logic extends to triple-top and quadruple-top buys.

A double-bottom or triple-bottom sell print is treated as evidence that the prevailing trend is turning, so a hedge or an exit can be planned. That double-bottom sell occurs when an O column breaks the low of the previous O column, marking a trend that is turning against a long.

High-pole warning after a buy

After a buy has already printed, an advance of five or six boxes followed by an approximate 50 percent reversal is treated as a high-pole warning that a sell signal is forming. The high-pole is that post-buy extension of several boxes that then gives back about half of the rise, read as an early warning that a sell print is forming.

Vertical count on a three-box reversal

On a three-box reversal scale, direction changes only after price moves three boxes against the active column. The vertical-count objective multiplies the number of boxes from the prior low into the first buy by three and adds that product to the low.

In the worked vertical-count example, a $51 low and a $55 buy imply four boxes, a product of 12, and an incomplete objective of $63, which becomes $66 if the signal prints at $56 instead.

Box size by price band

Box size is scaled by price band: 25 cents below $5, 50 cents from $5 to $20, $1 from $20 to $100, and $2 or larger above $100, with an optional 50-cent box between $20 and $100 to capture more swings.

Trendline and the bullish support zone

A trendline is a sloping support or resistance guide used to decide whether a sequence of higher highs and higher lows remains valid or has been broken. While a rising sequence of higher highs and higher lows remains inside a bullish support zone and the trendline is intact, additional size is added on pullbacks rather than faded.

The bullish support zone is the area above an intact rising trendline where those pullbacks are treated as add points rather than as reasons to fade the move.

When a short or put is considered

A short or defined-risk put is considered only after a trendline break is accompanied by emerging point-and-figure sell signals and weakening relative strength.

Daily posting in the Wyckoff style

Manual daily posting of the figure charts is presented as the same hand-construction discipline described in Wyckoff-method manuals, kept so that each column change stays visually justified. In this workflow the Wyckoff method is that manual chart-construction discipline: each reversal is posted by hand so the operator can see, and justify, every column change before acting.

Monthly work on industrial-average names

On longer-horizon monthly work, the industrial-average names were described as showing uninterrupted upward trendlines.