Richard Wyckoff's framework, developed in the early twentieth century, is organised around three laws: supply and demand determine direction, effort-vs-result reveals whether a move is genuine, and cause built in a range determines the extent of the effect that follows.
The method describes market cycles as four phases: accumulation, markup, distribution and markdown, with specific events inside each range such as the selling climax, the secondary test, the wyckoff-spring and the sign of strength.
It is more disciplined than most pattern systems because it demands that volume confirm price, and it keeps attention on structure rather than indicators. Its weakness is the same as all discretionary frameworks: phase labels are assigned with hindsight, and different analysts read the same range in opposite ways.
Related: wyckoff-accumulation, wyckoff-distribution, effort-vs-result, composite-operator, accumulation