Charts Beginner to advanced
Technical Analysis: Reading Price, Volume and Momentum
Technical analysis is the study of what buyers and sellers have already done, read off the chart. Used carefully it tells you where the pressure is and where you are wrong. These guides cover the tools and, just as carefully, their limits.
Technical analysis is the study of what buyers and sellers have already done, read off a price chart. This section covers the tools in order, starting with candlesticks and levels, then working through moving averages, momentum indicators, volume, chart patterns and volatility bands. Every guide spells out the arithmetic behind the indicator and states plainly where it stops working, because an indicator applied in the wrong market condition produces signals that are confident and useless.
It is written for everyone, including long-term investors who never intend to trade a pattern. Charts are useful for timing an entry you had already decided to make, for marking the level at which a position would be proven wrong, and for judging whether a move came with real participation behind it. Traders will use the whole section, and the risk guides in trading strategies matter more than any setup on these pages.
The pillar sets the premise and the limits. Candlesticks teach you to read a single bar, support and resistance give you the levels that matter, and moving averages turn trend into a number you can act on. Momentum indicators, volume and volatility bands come next, each answering a different question about the same chart. Chart patterns arrive last, because a pattern only means something once you can already read the trend, the level and the volume underneath it.
Charts pair naturally with the tools. The candlestick scanner finds the formations in these guides across the whole market each day, and the screener filters by the moving average and momentum conditions described here. Market breadth shows whether an index move has participation behind it. The trading strategies section turns all of this into entries, stops and position sizes, and the Pro Desk explains the microstructure behind why levels behave as they do.
Technical Analysis for Beginners: What Charts Can and Cannot Tell You
Every indicator is arithmetic performed on price. Knowing the calculation is what tells you when the output is informative and when it is meaningless.
Read the guide →Start with the basics
- beginner
How to Read Candlestick Charts: Bodies, Wicks and Key Patterns
A candle is four prices. Every reading worth having comes from dividing those four prices by each other, and the name of the shape comes last.
- beginner
Support and Resistance: Finding the Levels That Matter
Support and resistance is the only technical tool with no formula behind it, which is exactly why it is the easiest one to fool yourself with.
- beginner
Moving Averages Explained: SMA, EMA, Crossovers and the 200-Day
A moving average is a mean you recompute daily. The formula also tells you when the line moves for reasons that have nothing to do with today's price.
Go deeper
- intermediate
RSI, MACD and Stochastics: Momentum Indicators Explained
Three oscillators, three formulas, one column of closing prices. Build them by hand once and the redundancy between them becomes impossible to unsee.
- intermediate
Volume Analysis: Confirming Moves and Spotting Exhaustion
Volume is the only series on a chart that is not derived from price. It is also the one most often described in words the arithmetic does not support.
- intermediate
Chart Patterns: Head and Shoulders, Double Tops, Triangles, Flags
A pattern is tradeable once you can state its break level, its projection and the price that kills it. Those three numbers are geometry, and they need no statistics.
- intermediate
Bollinger Bands, ATR and Keltner Channels Explained
Price cannot tell you how far a stock usually travels in a day. That missing dimension is the whole job of a volatility indicator, and both calculations are short.
- intermediate
Fibonacci Retracements: The Levels and the Evidence
Four of the five standard levels are powers of 0.618. The fifth belongs to a different tradition entirely, and your choice of swing moves every line on the chart.
- intermediate
VWAP Explained: The Benchmark Institutions Trade Against
VWAP is one division: dollars traded divided by shares traded. The denominator only ever grows, which is why the afternoon line is so hard to move.
Technical Analysis: common questions
Does technical analysis actually work?
The evidence is mixed and depends on the market and the period tested. Trend following and volume confirmation hold up best. Precise pattern price targets and short-horizon signals perform far less consistently.
What is the best indicator for beginners?
The 200-day moving average, because it answers one question cleanly: is price above or below its long-term trend. Add volume next, then a single momentum reading. More indicators rarely improve decisions.
What does RSI above 70 mean?
It means price has risen quickly relative to its own recent range. In a strong uptrend RSI can sit above 70 for weeks, so the reading signals strength at least as often as it signals a reversal.
What is support and resistance?
Price areas where buying or selling has repeatedly shown up. They form where earlier trades were done, so participants remember them. Once a level breaks, old resistance often starts acting as new support.
Which chart timeframe should I use?
Match it to your holding period. Swing traders work from daily charts and check the weekly for trend, day traders use 5 and 15 minute charts, and long-term investors rarely need anything shorter than weekly.