12 March 2026
Impulse Is Not the Whole Story
A fast candle can still be a late candle. How we teach students to locate the start of a move before they talk about its strength.
Most first visits begin with a chart that already looks decided. A tall bar, a gap, a run of closes in one direction. The eye goes to the drama. In the studio we walk the eye backward instead: which bar actually started the sequence, and which bar only continued it.
Impulse, as we use the word, is a stretch of price that travels farther than the recent average swing in less time than the recent average pause. That definition is deliberately dull. It keeps people from calling every green candle a breakout. It also forces a comparison. Without a local baseline, “fast” is just a feeling.
We mark the origin with a short vertical tick and a date. Then we write one sentence: what was happening immediately before. If that sentence is empty—“it just went”—the mark is not finished. RSI, when we add it later, is asked to comment on that same stretch, not on a floating pane of its own.
Students who keep this habit tend to stop describing the last bar as if it were the whole move. That is the entire point of the first sitting.