Field note
Marking swings without wishful thinking
A desk habit for deciding whether a wick earns a swing label — before the next candle tempts you to rewrite history.
Wishful thinking shows up as a swing high that exists only because you needed resistance for a short. In market structure review we use a slower test: would you still call this swing if the next three candles went against the story?
Print the chart. Cover the right edge. Mark only what is already formed. Uncover one session at a time. If a label disappears when the future is hidden, it was never structure — it was hope.
This drill appears early in our technical analysis training because every later idea about breaks depends on swings you can defend when someone else is watching.