# Market Structure

Market structures are core concepts of the smart money concepts methodology. The TradingLab Smart Money Concepts toolkit automatically detects and highlights real-time market structures on the market, allowing for a wide variety of entry/exit signals.

### Types Of Market Structures <a href="#type-of-market-structures" id="type-of-market-structures"></a>

<figure><img src="https://3248255196-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-x-prod.appspot.com/o/spaces%2FvlAXcFRe66TbFkbvhRdj%2Fuploads%2FJYKOm6euK7yIQhrXsWjb%2Ftype-structures.png?alt=media&#x26;token=20551630-d531-4524-ab96-24a4e77b6b91" alt="Market Structure Stocks"><figcaption></figcaption></figure>

Market structures allow you to determine trend continuations as well as trend reversals in the market through two distinct structures:

* Change of Character (CHoCH)
* Break of Structure (BOS)

These are further described in the sub-sections below.

#### Change Of Character (CHoCH) <a href="#change-of-character-choch" id="change-of-character-choch"></a>

A change of character (CHoCH), sometimes also referred to as "market structure shift" is characterized by price breaking a prior swing low during an uptrend (bullish CHoCH) or a prior swing high during a downtrend (bearish CHoCH), and thus indicates a potential market reversal.

<figure><img src="https://3248255196-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-x-prod.appspot.com/o/spaces%2FvlAXcFRe66TbFkbvhRdj%2Fuploads%2FNd02dxKWsVshgNojdpGX%2FCHoCH%20image.png?alt=media&#x26;token=2bc5474c-24c8-436d-b38b-5583478530eb" alt="Change of Character (CHoCH)"><figcaption></figcaption></figure>

#### Break Of Structure (BOS) <a href="#break-of-structure-bos" id="break-of-structure-bos"></a>

A BOS is characterized by price breaking a prior swing high during an uptrend (bullish BOS) thus forming a new higher high, or a prior swing low during a downtrend (bearish BOS) thus forming a new lower low. These structures occur after a CHoCH.

BOS's do not indicate reversals but continuations of a trend, as such it is common to observe successive BOS in a trend.

<figure><img src="https://3248255196-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-x-prod.appspot.com/o/spaces%2FvlAXcFRe66TbFkbvhRdj%2Fuploads%2Fy7UOEAjs64e7dDV2JUmZ%2FBOS.png?alt=media&#x26;token=8c660b1b-8fe4-41c8-af32-7273465525d7" alt="Break of Structure (BOS)"><figcaption></figcaption></figure>