On a candlestick chart, what does the body of the candle show?

The range between the open and the close

The highest and lowest prices of the session

The difference between today's close and yesterday's close

A stock breaks below a level that held it up three times, then rallies back to that same level. What often happens there?

The old support tends to act as resistance, because sellers who were trapped above it use the retest to get out

The level is erased and has no further effect

The stock is required to fill the gap before it can continue

Volume always dries up to zero at old levels

RSI on a daily chart reads 78. What does that tell you?

Momentum has been strongly positive, and RSI can stay above 70 for weeks in a real uptrend

The stock is guaranteed to fall within five sessions

Roughly 78 percent of recent sessions have closed higher

The stock has risen 78 percent from its low

How does an exponential moving average differ from a simple moving average of the same length?

It weights recent prices more heavily, so it turns sooner and reacts more to the latest bars

It uses volume instead of price

It is calculated only on weekly data

It smooths out every false signal

What is a golden cross?

The 50 day moving average crossing above the 200 day moving average

Price crossing above its own 52 week high

Two trend lines meeting at the same point

RSI crossing above 50 on rising volume

A stock breaks above a six month range. What does volume add to the picture?

Volume well above its own recent average shows real participation behind the break, while a quiet break is easier to reverse

Volume is irrelevant once price has broken the level

Low volume breakouts are more reliable because fewer traders noticed

Volume only matters on the day a company reports earnings

Which of these is technical analysis genuinely unable to do?

Tell you why the price moved, or guarantee what it does next

Show where buyers stepped in before

Define a price at which your trade idea is wrong

Compare one stock's strength against another

The same stock looks like an uptrend on the weekly chart and a downtrend on the hourly. What should you conclude?

Both readings can be correct, because trend is defined by timeframe, so use the one that matches how long you intend to hold

The hourly chart is wrong because longer timeframes always win

The stock is untradeable until the two agree

One of the two charts has a data error

Technical Analysis quiz beginner

Technical Analysis Basics Quiz: 10 Questions

Ten beginner questions on reading a chart without reading too much into it.

10 questions · about 5 minutes · instant explanations · nothing you answer leaves your browser

AI-assisted, reviewed and edited by Ryza Glorioso. How we use AI

Sep 23, 2026 5 min read

About this quiz

Candlesticks, support and resistance, moving averages, RSI and volume, tested with plain numbers and an honest look at what charts cannot tell you. Each question comes with a short explanation of the right answer and a link to the guide that teaches it, so a wrong answer is a reading list rather than a dead end.

The quiz draws on the Technical Analysis section. If you are new to the topic, start with the guides below, then come back and test yourself. Scores are calculated in your browser and are not stored or sent anywhere.

Frequently asked questions

Is this quiz free?

Yes, and it always will be. There is no account to create and no email address to hand over, and your answers are scored in the browser rather than on a server.

What score counts as passing?

Seven out of ten is a solid beginner result. The questions about what charts cannot do matter as much as the calculations, because most chart reading mistakes come from expecting too much of the tool.

Does technical analysis actually work?

The evidence is mixed and depends heavily on the market, the timeframe and the costs of trading. Charts are best used to describe the current balance of buyers and sellers and to define where you are wrong, rather than to predict the next move.

About this quiz

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