Structure break in plain words — why a close below the anchor changes the picture

A break is when price goes under the anchor low. Not touching it, not wicking through it — closing below. From that moment the previous picture is void: whoever was leading price is not leading it any more.

The anchor low is not just any bottom. It is the bottom of the move after which the market took the liquidity and carried on. While price holds above it, the buyer leads. That is why breaking the anchor means more than breaking some random low: the anchor is already confirmed by the move, not merely drawn on the chart.

How it looked on the euro

Take the euro against the dollar, daily. On the fifth of November 2025 the indicator marked the anchor low at 1.14686. While price stays above it, the structure is up.

On the twenty-seventh of January 2026 price puts in a high at 1.20831, and the indicator marks it as a lower high. That is the first sign: the peaks stopped growing. On its own it cancels nothing — the structure is still up while the anchor holds.

And on the twenty-fourth of June price goes under that very anchor and closes below it, at 1.13246. That is the break. Not a touch, not a wick: a close below the anchor.

A bait and a break are different things

One distinction, or everything blurs together. It happens like this: price dips under a low and comes straight back — the structure does not change, because what was taken was the bait. A break is different. It happens to the anchor low, the one already confirmed by a liquidity sweep.

The markup itself helps you tell them apart: anchor points are labelled separately, not every low. If there is no label, what you are looking at is not an anchor, and going under it changes nothing.

What to do with it

A break does not say «sell». It changes whose side you are on. While the structure is up, you look for entries up. Once it breaks, you wait for the new markup and read it again.

The practical point here is patience: a break is settled on the close, not on the poke through. Reacting to a wick is reacting to something that has not happened yet.

A structure break is the point where the whole markup is rebuilt. The FocusProfit Trade Model indicator labels anchor extremes separately from the rest, so you can see which low actually changes the picture when it gives way, and which one does not.

The topic is covered in more depth in the Learn section, and the causality in full is in the methodology.