11 March 2026
Three touches are not a law
Traders inherit a folk rule: wait for three touches before a trendline is real. In the studio we treat that as a starting caution, not a statute. Two well-chosen swing points, with a later reaction that respects the same slope, often describe the market better than a line that has been rotated until it snags every wick.
The work is in the pivot, not the count. Ask whether the high or low you marked is a place where participants actually changed their mind, visible as a close back inside the prior range, not merely the longest shadow of the week. A third touch that only exists because you nudged the angle is a confession that the structure was already in doubt.
When we read channels in class, we log the date of each touch and whether it was a wick or a close. That log, more than any magic number, tells you whether the rail is still doing a job.