Market structure one of the most important aspects of price action trading and while it seems simple most people get it wrong so buckle up because in the next 10 to 15 minutes you're going to know everything you need to know to become a master of Market structure and stick around to the end because there's something waiting for you there that will take your learning to the next level so what is market structure it's just the way the market moves uptrends consolidation and downtrends these are the three phases of Market structure and this is what they look like the idea is we buy through uptrends sell through downtrends and stay out during consolidation during a trending move not consolidation moves we get two phases impulses and Corrections impulse moves are PR Trend moves and Corrections are pullback moves why does this happen because the market is an auction in an uptrend for example there will be points where buyers want to buy but they're not happy paying the current price to actually buy that contract or asset so buying slows in the short term easing the market until it reaches a price that people are happy to pay when a good buying price is met people buy and the next impulse starts again quite simple right so so why is it so hard to understand and what makes it difficult well the first place people go wrong is in Reading highs and lows incorrectly to read structure we look at higher highs higher lows lower highs and lower lows but because markets move across different time frames sometimes we can get caught up looking at the wrong lows and the wrong highs to avoid this we want to view structure as waves so instead of looking at every small up and down move we want to look at structure in big phases like this this keeps you in tune with the overall trend Direction instead of getting you lost in every small push and this leads me on to the second Point substructure versus swing structure the waves we just drew out are swing structure and the small moves that happen within are substructure it is possible to take advantage of these smaller substructure moves as they are valid Trends inside of the larger Trend itself we're going to talk about this very soon so let's have a go at mapping structure for this example we're going to GB AUD on the 1H hour time frame now we can see we had a trend shift here shifting us into an uptrend now we're going to map the swing structure so in terms of the Swing structure we are seeing multiple breaks of structure which are taking us to the upside and we can also clearly see the market is making higher lows along the way so this is clearly an uptrend it's not a downtrend now how exactly do we Mark the swing structure are we going to consider every tiny little Nuance in the trend no we are not we are going to move with the bigger picture and view this as waves so there we have Wave 1 that's the impulse wave two that's a correction wave three is the next impulse wave four four is the correction wave five is another impulse wave six is a correction and then wave seven would lead us all the way up towards this point just here because this really is not too much of a viable breaking structure being just a wick and this would actually signify the larger wave so you've seen there how we Mark out structure as a wave instead of actually trying to look at every single little move now sometimes when I'm teaching someone they come to me and when they're in their early days they're actually looking at every single little movement like this and considering considering this is the larger Trend Direction and then getting confused because they're like well the Market's changing direction every few seconds how am I supposed to keep up with this well in reality we're not we just want to move with the big picture we don't need to worry about little candle movements like this and the intricacies of each small move what we need to do is focus on that big picture remember earlier I mentioned the concept of substructure the smaller Trends inside of the larger Trend well we can actually trade these as their very own Trends so breaking down structure even further in this example we can start to look for the smaller opportunities inside of the bigger move so now working with the same piece of structure that we just looked at in that structure mapping example we are going to look at the substructure and swing structure of the market so let's mark on the swing structure and now let's mark the sub structure the swing structure is the impulse moves and the substructure is the correction moves the pullbacks okay so as you can see although the larger trend is bullish we do see smaller bearish opportunities happening within we can see that we have a valid downtrend actually happening inside of the correction this is where we can take advantage of the substructure to take trades that are counter to the higher time frame swing Trend but entirely valid using a lower time frame so for example here inside the hourly we could drop to the 15minute and look for 15minute bearish opportunities throughout this structure so for the sake of example I'm going to dig into this movement here and show you where the substructure opportunity came in okay so using this piece of price action we can see we have the impulsive movement this was the larger hourly move and now we are looking for a corrective move now of course we do not want to execute upon any trades until the market sentiment has shifted so being on the 15minute we would want to see a 15-minute break in structure which would come at this level now if we get that all good we can go for a substructure move if we don't get that that's fine we will just be continuing with the higher time frame swing structure now as you can see we've just broken the trend here by forming a lower low with a body closure so what we could do now is look for opportunities to sell through this Valley 15-minute Trend so why are we doing this if we know that the high time frame is bullish well the reason for that is simply because we have a valid lower time frame Trend so this actually comes back to the fractal nature of the market now the market moves in a way where the same patterns are repeated across multiple time frames and this is a great example of that we can actually see a valid hourly Trend but we can also go and see a valid 15minute Trend both of which may provide valid trades now when you're taking a trade like this because we're moving against the higher time frame even though we're moving in a valid 15-minute Trend here we do want to make sure we are employing a break even strategy or trailing stops or doing something that will save us when the market doesn't reach our targets because obviously if the high time frame trend is bullish the high time frame trend has more weight that means that we're not always going to get our targets filled therefore meaning sometimes our trades May reverse after moving in profit so we need to make sure we're protected from that and in an Ideal World locking something in as well through trailing stops so as you can see see this trade has now played out and we would have actually added here 3.5r that we wouldn't have seen if we weren't using this substructure swing structure methodology now you could obviously refine this to your strategy or execute the trade however you want the concept I'm trying to show you today is just the trend so you can see that both the biggest swing structure and the smaller substructure can provide opportunities for traits the hard part is differentiating what is Swing structure and what is substructure and the best way to do that is by looking at the market as waves the next rule you should consider is how far you should look to take your substructure trades before taking profit you shouldn't try to extend substructure moves past the highs or lows of the Swing structure moves so if we're in a swing uptrend and we are taking a substructure sell we should look to take profit at or before the demand Zone at the bottom of the Swing structure move this way we know if the market continues to move in the uptrending fashion we are out of our sell move before we get destroyed this way we capitalize on the whole pullback or correction but we don't try to take the market too far and instead we keep moving with the larger swing Trend if you enjoyed that hit the link in the description that's going to take you to my free course where you can learn more about Market structure supply and demand liquidity macroeconomics and other Core Concepts that are going to tenfold your trading performance trading with the trend is the most secure way to make money in the markets and now that you're armed with the knowledge on how to do that I suggest you go and back test build up a data set and then learn from your personal perception of the market with that being said don't procrastinate don't waste time get to work