How I Trade Market Structure Like a Hedge Fund Analyst (2025 Guide)

Most traders learn market structure just like this. Oh, price is creating higher highs and higher lows. I'm just going to buy at higher low.

But that's not how real capital flows in the market. Hedge funds aren't drawing zigzags on charts. They're identifying where the liquidity sits, where the dumb money is trapped, and how to trade with intention, not reaction.

So, in this video, I'll break down how I trade market structure just like a professional gambler. Professional gambling type [ __ ] bro. No, I mean professional capital allocator, not a retail gel.

Anyways, if you're new here, my name is Brett and I help traders go from inconsistent to funded using a mechanical system based on institutional concepts, psychology, and data, not sickness. And definitely no gooning here, buddy. I've personally helped hundreds of traders pass funded challenges and scale their accounts to five to six figures.

And in this breakdown, I'm going to show you exactly how I think about market structure from a high performance lens. The problem right now is that most traders, they treat market structure just like a checklist. The price break structure.

Okay, cool. Then now I'm just going to wait for price to retest it and then I'm going to enter for a buy. Now, that kind of thinking works until it doesn't.

Especially during news, fake outs or engineered liquidity sweeps because real structure isn't just about where price went. It's about who's strapped, where liquidity is put, and what institutions need to do next. Because at the end of the day, they are the ones with sufficient capital to break structure to cause order flow to shift.

So before we talk about the highle stuff like how to combine market structure and liquidity, let's revise the basics because it's very important that you get the fundamentals right. You need to get the foundation right before you move on to the more advanced stuff. So at any point of time you want to be asking yourself this one question.

Is the market up, down or sideways? If the market is in the uptrend, it's going to be creating higher highs and higher lows just like this. And if the market is in a downtrend, price will be creating lower highs and lower lows like what I can see over here.

And if there is no clear structural highs and lows being formed and the market is just stuck within a range where it's just oscillating within like like this sideways little market right here, then it is a consolidation or sideways market. So quite simply put, the market can only move in three ways. It can either move up, down or sideways.

It can't do weird patterns like going in triangle or like a circle. All right? So like I mentioned in a bullish market structure price will be creating your higher highs and higher lows where the next swing high is higher than the previous swing high and the next swing low is higher than the previous swing low.

And as a result we are able to identify a bullish break of structure whenever price takes out the previous swing high. Right? Same thing in a bearish market structure.

It's just you are looking at it from like a inverted perspective where price is creating lower highs and lower lows. Right? This high is lower than this high.

This low is lower than this low. And whenever we got a break of structure to the downside where price took out the previous low, that is where we can identify our bearish breakoff structure. And obviously the market doesn't look like this, right?

This is just what textbooks actually teach you. In reality, the market looks something like this where price pulls up, pulls back, goes up, makes a minor pullback, and then goes up and then pulls back and then starts shifting bearish in the short term in order to facilitate that pullback before price start shifting bullish again and then take out the previous swing high and then creating another higher high and another higher low. And the whole cycle repeat itself over and over again until the sellers overpower the buyers and the market start shifting bearish.

And once the market start shifting bearish then price will be giving us lower highs and lower lows just like this. So a tip here is that you want to trade from strong structure and you want to target weak structure. Right?

So in a bullish market structure strong lows are being formed and weak highs are getting taken out. What I mean is that this low is considered strong because it led to price breaking the weak high right and then yeah it pretty much explain why this high is weak, right? because the strong low just absolutely smashed right past it.

And in a bearish market structure, price will be creating strong highs and weak lows. So you basically want to be trading from strong structure and you want to target weak structure. So basically in a bullish market structure, you want to buy at strong lows and you want to target this weak highs right here because we know that price is just going to blast right through that easily.

And then in a bearish market structure, you want to sell at strong highs and actually target this weak lows here. And the next concept that you need to understand is swing structure versus internal structure. Right?

So when you have a bullish break of structure just like this, we know that this is a swing high. This is a swing low. And then once price starts making that pullback, right?

You can see the internal structure will start shifting bearish to facilitate that pullback. And how do you actually define what is considered as an internal structure and a swing structure? Well, you must first identify the swing range, the swing high and the swing low.

Once you're able to do that, then everything in between the swing high and the swing low is considered as your internal structure. Right? So over here the internal structure was actually creating like a higher higher low and then price started coming down here and take out that last internal higher low.

What this means is that the internal structure right now is shifting bearish like I said earlier to facilitate that pullback. Right? So it's just turning bearish for a short amount of time.

So the swing structure the higher time frame structure is still bullish. It's just that the internal structure on the lower time frame is shifting bearish to facilitate that pullback. And then pretty much what happens next is that once a new swing low is being created, later on demand overpowers supply and then price gets pushed up and it takes out the last internal lower high which means buyers overpower the sellers.

And right now this pullback is over and right now we are going to be continuing with the higher time frame swing structure. And you can see the internal structure begin to shift back bullish again creating this internal higher highs and higher lows. And then it later led on to a swing break of structure where price take out that swing high.

And yeah and then price creates a new higher high. And then the entire cycle repeats itself over and over again. So same thing right here swing high, swing low and everything in between right here is counted as your internal structure.

So the next fundamental concept that you need to understand is market shift. Right? Market shift basically represent a shift in structure.

it tell us that the internal order flow is shifting from bullish to bearish or vice versa. So in this case right here you can see we got a downtrend right price is creating lower highs and then later on demand overpowers supply and next thing you know price goes up there and actually take out that last lower high which is supposedly your strong high. And when price actually take out your strong high just like this, obviously it led to a market shift.

And then this low is no longer a weak low. It becomes a strong low since it led to a break of structure. And I can see right now the bearish expectational order flow has failed.

And it pretty much confirmed to us that that is a bullish trend change and price is creating higher highs and higher lows right now until once again sellers overwhelmed the buyers and supply come down here and step into the market and overpower demand. and then it led to price taking this last high low giving us a market shift and the trend has shifted bearish. So that's pretty much all the basics of market structure at a very high level.

Now let me go through the secret sauce source with you. Let me go through the professional hedge fund billionaire daddy systematic trading strategy that no one tells you. Trust me I know this works because this strategy made me a filthy rich billionaire.

So basically the first step is that you want to actually look for some form of bias. Okay, you must understand that bias always comes first. So I start with a bias based on higher time frame structure and liquidity, right?

So in this particular example right here, forgive my ugly drawing, we got price actually taking out that last swing high, right? So what this means is that we got a bullish break of structure and based on this, I'm able to identify my swing low and my swing high. Okay, so you also want to ask yourself questions like are we at a point of interest?

Are we at a supply and demand zone? Did the point of interest or structural low sweep liquidity and are there any clean equal highs or lows above? Right?

So what I mean right here is that over here you can see price did not just do like a textbook break of structure just like this. Now what happened was that price actually went up there pulls back but then instead of breaking structure straight away it created like a minor pullback before it comes down to sweep the liquidity below this swing low right here before pushing to the upside. And when this happens this is not the swing low.

This becomes the swing low because this is the lowest point that led to the breakoff structure and this swing low is also known as our protected low right since it actually swept liquidity. So based on this itself, our expectation is that price could potentially start pulling back anytime soon and then it's going to come down and create a new higher low and it's going to respect like this previous higher low right here and the bullish structure the bullish order flow is going to continue just like this. Remember structure means nothing without context and that's why I always define bias first.

Right? So in this case I've identified my swing low. I've identified my swing high and I know for a fact that if I'm looking for the highest property setup I want to actually enter for a buy somewhere right around here.

So once you get your bias the next step is to identify liquidity zones. You want to ask yourself this one key question. Where is the available liquidity?

So basically this is where I mark the zones where retail is most likely to get tracked. I'm talking about chart patterns like double bottoms, clean trend lines and swing highs and lows. Right?

So basically over here if price actually created like higher highs and higher lows just like this and you know retail traders like to place their trend lines right here. We know that there is available liquidity sitting below this lows right here waiting to be swept or where there is some form of chart pattern like maybe there's like a double bottom right here and this is where retail traders enter for a buy and place their stop loss below this equal lows right here. Once again that is just liquidity for later on price money to come down there and sweep it before the real move actually happens.

Now you must understand that these zones aren't entry points. They are magnets. They are inducements.

There are traps laid out by professional hedge funds in order to bid retail traders to enter early so that they can engineer liquidity. So the third step is that before you actually enter for the trade, right? Before you start entering for a buy right here, you want to wait for some form of liquidity sweep and structure shift, right?

Here's what I mean. You can see over here we have identified our swing low and swing high. So everything in between is internal structure.

And you can start to see that the internal structure started shifting bearish once again to do what? to facilitate the higher time frame swing pullback. So over here when price start creating this lower highs and lower lows right here we know that it's just bearish in the short term right so we can keep track of this and what we want to see is the internal structure to shift bullish okay so over here you can see price comes down creating a lower high continues creating like an internal branch break or structure and then later on price goes up pulls back goes up what do we have here we got a equal lows double bottom this is a very common chart pattern and it's also a inducement trap So what happens is that a lot of retail traders, they see price mitigating this demand zone right here and then they see this double bottom pattern.

This is where they enter for a buy and we know that is liquidity, right? There's going to be a ton of liquidity sitting below this lows. So you want to wait for that to be swept before you even consider looking for an entry, right?

All right. So in this case later on price comes down there sweep the available liquidity below these equal lows mitigate our higher time frame demand zone and it's also at our extreme zone which is our last line of defense which has to hold in order for the higher time frame structure to remain bullish. And then later on price comes up there and take out this last lower high this last internal lower high.

And this give us your market shape. And then you can start looking for confirmation to look for your entries. Remember, I want to see a liquidity sweep.

I want to see a break of structure just like this that clears liquidity, not just like a random spike. And then I want to look for a clean displacement and break off structure in the opposite direction in the form of a market shift. Right?

So I want to see that very sharp V-shaped reaction right here. And this my friend is your real market shift which confirm to you that the internal order flow has shifted from bearish to bullish. And now after you got a market shift, you can simply just wait for price to pull back to the lower time frame demand zone or point of interest that led to the market shift.

And that is where you look for your entry and you look to buy from there. And like I said earlier, you want to trade from strong structure and target weak structure. Right?

So in this case, if you're entering for a buy at this strong low right here, you can target this week high. Or you can even be ambitious and try to target this swing high because we know that the internal structure has officially shifted back bullish and the lower time frame internal structure is aligned with the higher time frame swing structure. And now all the confluences in the world to actually try to target this swing high right here because we know for a fact that price is just going to continue and head up and take out this swing high here.

Remember this strategy only works if you have some form of mechanical confirmation. I only enter when my checklist aligns when there's a structure shift when there is a valid inducements you know liquidity being swept and there's clear imbalance. There is no second guessing here.

There is no overtrading or no trading with emotion whatsoever. Once I see a trade that checks off every single criterion within my trade plan, I enter. I execute without hesitation, reservation or fear.

And that's the difference between guessing or gambling and systematic trading. And yes, my friend, this strategy works on forex, stocks, crypto, futures, indices, options, or whatever niche little corner of the markets you like to gamble in. Now, let's go on to the charts and actually apply what we have learned.

Right? So, using Euro USD as an example, the first thing is to obviously identify your bias, right? So, we got a bullish break of structure to the upside right here.

How do we know that? because this is the last time price actually created like a higher low before pushing to the upside. And just by doing that alone, I can identify my daily swing low right here.

This is also a strong low because it led to price taking out this week high here. And you can also identify your swing high right here. And then you also want to try to spot the liquidity, right?

See any swing low or high or point of interest that swept liquidity recently, right? So if I look towards the left hand side right here, what do we have here? Okay, we got price goes up, pulls back, goes up, pulls back, and then push up.

And then later on, price came down there, swept the available liquidity below this equal lows before pushing to the upside right here, giving us our protected low, right? So based on this, we know that this is a clear as day liquidity. So if this is not clear, right, let me just go to the maybe the 4hour time frame to show you what I mean, right?

So if I go on the 4-hour time frame, you can see it becomes much more clearer, right? Like you can see all the consolidation right here is just liquidity being built up below these lows right here. Okay.

So taking that into consideration we can identify that this is actually our demand zone at this swing low right here that swept liquidity right. So we know that this is a very important point of interest that we should be looking out for right because price can potentially come down here create like a new high low before pushing to the upside. Now just like I mentioned earlier everything between your swing low and your swing high is considered as your internal structure.

So what that means is that if I see like a higher highs and a higher low being formed right here, I know that this is the internal higher high and this is the internal higher low and then later on price came down there, take out that last internal high low and it means that price is just shifting bearish on the internal structure on the lower time frame structure to facilitate that pullback. Okay, so in this example right here, you can even go one step further to try to identify all the internal structure and just map them out. Right?

So like I said this will be your last internal break of structure right here and then later on price comes out there take out that last internal high there as well and then what happens is that this is the lowest point that led to this internal break of structure right which means that this is the low that we are looking out for. So when price actually came down here and take out this low right here, what this means is that the supply has managed to overpower the demand, right? At least for the short term.

And right now, like I said, price is just shifting bearish. Okay? So after that happens, you can see price started shifting bearish.

And what do we have? We got internal lower highs being formed right here. Right?

We got internal bearish break of structure to the downside. Right? So you can map that up as well.

So we got one right here and then we got another one right there. Okay? So just continue follow the money.

So if you were trying to trade this pullback right here, what you could have done is to sell at this strong highs right here and target this week lows, right? So this will be uh some pretty decent risk-to-reward trade setups right there. Okay, so over here price has came all the way down to our extreme demand zone and this is where you got to be cautious, right?

Because at any point of time right now, price can start shifting bullish. Okay, so at this point of time right here, this is where I would potentially jump down to my lower time frame since price has officially mitigated my higher time frame demand zone. So this is where I would jump down to like the 1 hour time frame to observe what price is doing.

And you can see over here what we have this was that last internal break of structure on the 1 hour time frame. Right? So if price is able to take out this high right here, what this means is that we can potentially get a market shift and right now price could potentially start shifting bullish.

Right? So we are still waiting for demand to actually overpower supply. Right?

So based on this you can even drop like this 1 hour supply zone that we have right here. Right? So ideally we want to see this zone fail because if this supply zone is going to do job price is just going to come down here mitigate this and just continue going down taking out this low and just continuing this bearish market structure as well.

Right? So let's see whether that actually happens or not. Okay.

So you can see later on price actually went up there and actually pierced right through. So this is where uh I'm looking for like a much more convincing market shift in the form of like a candlestick actually closing above this high right here. Right?

So let's see whether we got that. There we go. Right.

So once the candlestick actually officially closes above this last high right here, this last internal high this tell us that demand has indeed overpowered supply and right now we can start looking for longs. Now before we do that remember we need to ask ourself where is the available liquidity right where is the liquidity ship where is the level where smart money actually enter into the market itself right and this becomes crystal clear when you actually observe what price is doing right now okay so over here what do we have we got a very sharp V-shaped reaction and what happened over here was that price cames down here pulls back goes down pulls back and then later on came down there swept the available liquidity below these lows right here before we get a ton of demand stepping into the market creating such a large imbalance that we have right here. Right?

So based on this, this will be my liquidity sweep. Now that we have identified our liquidity sweep and the market shift to confirm that the internal orderflow is shifting, this is when you want to actually start to wait for price to pull back to some form of lower time frame supply and demand zone and then you look for your entry from there. So using this example right here, let's try to identify every single point of interest that led to this market shift.

Right? So you always want to start from the extreme. So over here we got a extreme demand zone and then later on what happen is that price went up there pulls back to this extreme demand zone before pushing up even further.

If you make it a little bit less refined and you mark up this entire consolidation you can see that this demand zone has pretty much been mitigated which means that the buy orders within this demand zone has already been filled right and it led to this move to the upside right here. You can see amount of imbalance clear as state. So what this tell us is that price is most likely not going to use this demand zone in the future anymore, right?

But I'm just going to leave it up here for for for your sake. Okay. So over here later on price goes up, pulls back and then push up again.

Right? So based on this, this is the next demand zone. And you can see this one is unmitigated.

It's fresh. And the good thing is that it's actually available liquidity sitting near the zone itself. Where is the available liquidity?

You ask, right? What do we have right here? Price goes up, pulls back, and then goes up.

Right? So just judging this alone, we know that this is a low right here. This is a internal higher low and there is going to be available liquidity sitting below these lows, right?

Because the retail traders will enter for a buy right here. Guess what? This is where that stop loss is at.

All right, nice. So we got a clean nail liquidity right here. So my next step is to just actually enter for a buy upon the mitigation of this demand zone right here.

Right? So this is where I could potentially place like a buy order at the edge of the zone itself. place my stop loss below the zone and just try to target like three R or even like the week high that is potentially going to form very soon.

And now it's just a matter of patience waiting for price to actually come down to our lower time frame demand zone. Right? So in this case I'm not doing anything.

I'm not panicking whatsoever. You can see price is just moving exactly the way that I actually imagine it to move. Right?

Goes up there take out this structural high right here. comes down potentially sweep the liquidity below this low right here and tap into our point of interest that we have right here. Boom.

Once that happened, we get into the trade. Like I said, our stop loss is actually below this demand zone. And by this time, since price is started moving up, you can even move your stop loss like below this new low being form right here.

And you can see this low actually did like a cheeky little liquidity swip on the lower time frame right here as well before pushing to the upside. Right. So like I said, you can either target just fix three R or you can try to target like this weak high that we have right here, which we know for a fact that price is just going to smash right through because the internal order flow is bullish and we want to trade from strong lows and target weak highs.

All right, so let's just look at how this trade play out itself, right? Price goes up, boom, smash our TP within a few hours. As simple as that.

Boom. Go and get your Ferrari. Just kidding.

No, you put your head down and you continue grinding. All right. So you raise this setup and you look for the next opportunity.

Okay. So over here what we have we got another internal break of structure to the upside which confirm to us that this market shift is indeed valid. Right.

Demand has officially overpowered supply. Okay. So like I said this is where you can start to refresh and start to re-evaluate the situation and start thinking about where is price going to start to create like this new high low.

So you can look to get in again and try to trade from this strong low and target this week high right here. So once again you just do the exact same thing. And you just want to identify the point of interest that actually led to this internal break of structure right here.

So you always start off the extreme, right? You can see this one is the extreme demand zone. And you can see it's unmediticated.

It's fresh. And then there could potentially be another tricky little demand zone that we have up down here. Right?

So right here we're just waiting for price to potentially pull back to either of these point of interest and then create like a higher low and then push to the upside and then that is where we can look for entry itself. Once again, where is the available liquidity? Right.

So in this example right here, price goes up, pulls back, and then goes up. Right? So there we have another little cheeky little low right here.

We know that there's going to be liquidity sitting below this low. We can wait for that to be swept and just place our buy order at the extreme demand zone and then place our stop loss below it. So once again, this is the extreme demand zone, right?

Because this is the lowest point, right? The protected low that led to this internal break of structure, right? So we know that this has to hold in order for the internal structure to remain bullish.

So that is where you place your stop loss below this zone. Like I said, you can either target like this swing high right here or just do like a tricky little three R trade will be like just like this. There we go.

So yeah, over here you can see such a sharp amount of imbalance. We know that it's not going to sustain at some point of time. Price is just going to pull back and when is it going to start pulling back?

When it mitigates some form of supply that we have on the left hand side, right? You can see right here price mitigated this supply zone right here starts pulling back and where is it going to pull back to this extreme demand zone that we have down here. And then when that actually happens, let's see whether we get them to trade.

Boom. We get them into the trade just like this. As simple as that.

And then we just watch price flies. Like I said, you can target a tree out or I can target like this swing high right here. So you can see later on price slowly but surely trigger that up, hit our TP, and we call it a day.

So that's pretty much how I approach market structure at a high level. You must understand that I don't trade to feel smart. I trade to allocate capital efficiently.

The moment you start thinking like a hedge fund, like a professional trader, where every trade is a datab decision, your results change. Because this isn't about winning every trade. It's about thinking in probabilities, journaling religiously, and executing with discipline.

Look, man, I'm not here to sell you anything. I'm not some YouTuber trying to make a quick buck off a sponsorship or a signal scam. I actually trade.

I've made enough money from the markets that my kids kids are good for life. You know, since I'm a certified billionaire daddy. So, no, my friend, I don't need your money.

I don't need to sell you [ __ ] But if you have been stuck watching hours of trading videos, blowing accounts after accounts, second-guessing every entry, then here's your shot to stop gambling and start trading like a professional. Since I'm a nice guy, I put together a market mechanics course completely free. It breaks down the exact system that I use, how I read liquidity, enter trades mechanically, and manage risk like an market assassin.

No, I don't need your credit card details. You can just get it for free. Just click the link in the description.

Make sure you watch it, you stud it, and you apply it. Fair warning though, if you're looking for signals, shortcuts, or magic indicators, you'll hate it. But if you're serious about mastering this game, I will see you inside.

And as always, remember, you're just one trade away. So maybe I can place it right here. But at the same time, this is a pretty [ __ ] risk reward, you know.

Okay, now [ __ ] it. All in or nothing, baby. [ __ ] it.