For Business

Trends & Market Structure

How to Spot a Choppy Market

A choppy market is one whose days are large, alternate in colour, and add up to almost nothing: a great deal of movement and no distance. This paper shows you fifty-four days of the pound in the summer of 2025 drawn from real candles, the idea as a saw blade whose teeth go up and down while the blade lies flat, the stretch on the daily chart, the days laid end to end so that steps taken and distance covered can be compared, and how to read a band's height from a rectangle's two prices on your platform.

Difficulty
Advanced
Reading time
5 min
Pages
8
Reviewed by
Saman Rahbar

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Fifty-four days that went nowhere

A choppy market is one whose days are large, alternate, and add up to almost nothing. The pound against the dollar from 18 July to 1 October 2025 is one. The days were not small: the sum of the fifty-four bodies, each day's move from open to close, was 2,528 pips, a pip being the fourth decimal place, the smallest step most people count in. But they pointed every way. The colour changed twenty-five times in fifty-three steps, the longest run of one colour was six days, and the stretch ended 61 pips from where it began.

A saw blade

The picture is a saw blade. Each tooth goes up and comes down, the next does the same, and the blade lies flat along its whole length. The teeth are the days, each a real move up or down. The blade is where the price is, week after week. Measure the teeth and there is a great deal of movement; measure the blade and there is none. A choppy market is a saw blade laid on the chart, and the way to spot one is to measure the blade, not the teeth.

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