Wyckoff Markup

Markup is the uptrend that follows a successful accumulation. Demand is in control, pullbacks are comparatively short, and volume tends to expand on the advances and contract on the reactions, in the classical description. Wyckoff did not ask the trader to predict the markup from inside the base with certainty. He asked the trader to participate once the signs of strength were there and to add on reactions that hold the structure. The phase ends when the advance climaxes and a distribution range begins, or when the trend simply fails. There is no required length. Some markups are brief. Some last for years and contain ranges that are re-accumulation, not the end.

Trade markup as a trend. The entries are pullbacks that hold higher lows, or breakouts from re-accumulation ranges, with stops under the structure that defines the trend. Do not fade a markup because it has "lasted too long." Duration is not a Wyckoff sell signal. Climactic volume, a failure of a new high, and a range that starts to show weakness are the evidence you would need, and even then the working assumption is the trend until the range resolves. Use the cause of the prior base as a rough area to reassess, not as a sell order that ignores the tape in front of you.

Hold a markup with a trailing structure stop and a size that lets you sit through a normal reaction. Add only on those reactions, not on the vertical day, unless your plan explicitly pyramids and the combined risk still fits. When a reaction is deeper and more urgent than the ones before it, pay attention. That change in character is how markups begin to end. You still need the level and the break. A scary bar inside an intact uptrend is not distribution. It is a bar.

Selling the entire position at the first resistance because the base count was reached, while the trend is intact and there is no weakness. Also buying every small dip with no distinction between a light-volume test and a heavy breakdown. And calling a downtrend a markup because you are waiting for the schematic to turn. Markup is an uptrend. If the trend is down, the phase name is wrong.

The volume signature of a healthy markup is a tendency, and modern volume will often refuse to look classical. A markup can gap through your add price and through your stop on the same news. The phase label does not manage the gap. And the boundary with distribution is only obvious later. Anyone who says they sold the exact climax in real time, using only Wyckoff, should show the rule that fired before the bar, not the label they applied after the range formed.