Course 6 Intermediate

Reading Charts & Technical Analysis

Chart types, candlesticks, market structure, support and resistance, patterns and the indicators traders actually use.

0 of 14 lessons

Module 1: Chart basics

1
Timeframes
A timeframe is the period each bar or candle on a chart represents: one minute, one hour, one day. The same market looks completely different on a five-minute...
2
Line, Bar and Candlestick Charts
A line chart joins closing prices, a bar chart shows the open, high, low and close of each period as a vertical line with ticks, and a candlestick chart shows...
3
Reading a Candlestick
A candlestick tells you four prices for its period and, from their arrangement, who was in control. The body runs from the open to the close; a long body means...

4
Trends and Market Structure
A trend is a sequence of price swings in one direction. An uptrend makes higher highs and higher lows; a downtrend makes lower highs and lower lows. Market...
5
Ranges and Breakouts
A range is a period in which price moves sideways between a ceiling and a floor, and a breakout is the move that takes price out of the range. Markets spend...
6
Support and Resistance
Support is a price level where a decline has stopped and reversed before, and resistance is a level where a rally has stalled. They exist because traders...
7
Chart Patterns
Chart patterns are recognisable shapes formed by a series of swings: triangles, flags, double tops and bottoms, head and shoulders, and a few others. Each...

8
Moving Averages
A moving average is the average closing price over a set number of periods, redrawn on every bar, so it smooths the price into a line that shows direction....
9
RSI: The Relative Strength Index
The relative strength index compares the size of recent gains with recent losses and plots the result on a scale from 0 to 100. Readings above 70 are called...
10
MACD
MACD, moving average convergence divergence, plots the difference between two exponential moving averages, usually the 12 and 26-period, together with a...
11
Bollinger Bands and ATR
Bollinger Bands draw a moving average with two lines a set number of standard deviations above and below it, so the bands widen when volatility rises and...
12
Fibonacci Retracements and Pivot Points
Fibonacci retracements divide the distance of a price swing into ratios, 38.2, 50 and 61.8 percent, and draw those levels as places a pullback might stall....

13
Confirmation and Confluence
Confluence is several independent reasons pointing to the same level or direction: a structural swing low, a moving average, a retracement level and a...
14
Indicator Limitations
Every indicator is a calculation on past prices, so no indicator knows anything the chart does not already contain. Indicators lag, they whipsaw in conditions...

Every lesson's knowledge check plus a few extra questions, scored with feedback. Then continue to Course 7: Fundamental Analysis.