The structural definition of an uptrend: each swing high and swing low exceeds the previous one.
Market structure is read from swing points. In an uptrend each pullback bottoms above the last one (higher low) and each rally tops above the last one (higher high). The first lower low is the earliest sign the trend is changing.
This is the basis of most price-action trading and of terms like market structure shift or break of structure in order-block-style analysis.
Example: swing lows at $20, $22, $25 and swing highs at $23, $26, $29 form a clean uptrend. A drop to $24, below the $25 low, is the first break in that structure.
Original diagrams for the ideas on this page. Illustrative, not real market data.
How a trend is built. A trend is just a sequence of turning points. While each peak and each dip sits above the one before it the market is trending up; once both start landing below the previous ones the structure has turned down.
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