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Learn to read price charts and understand market structure. Discover the fundamentals of charting, trends, support and resistance levels, and the patterns that repeat across all markets.
If you are looking to learn technical analysis you have landed on the right page. This Technical Analysis Tutorial will give you a strong foundation of professional technical analysis.
If you are a complete beginner in the trading space, we advise you to start with our Forex tutorial for beginners.
If you have some basic knowledge of the field, or even have good experience, I am confident that you will find value in this technical analysis tutorial.
The information contained in this tutorial is the essence of accumulated trading and technical analysis experience from several technical experts.
We ask you to be patient while reading, especially in the beginning. If you feel that a topic is not clear, just keep going, it will be clearer by the end of the tutorial.
Note: Charting Platform
We are using TradingView as our charting platform for this Technical Analysis tutorial. The concepts apply to all charting platforms.
Technical analysis is a method that employs chart analysis tools to forecast possible future price movements. It is based on one major assumption that freely traded securities (such currencies, shares, etc.) travel in trends and shape identifiable repetitive patterns.
This assumption is based on the fact that human feelings, behaviors, and reactions are probably repetitive. And economic conditions move in cycles.
And since the price is determined by the people trading it, then the price will tend to have repetitive patterns. (We will discuss this more in the trends section).
Technical Analysis is Not a Science
It is a way of finding tendencies. A "tendency for the price to move in a certain direction", not "to actually move in a certain direction".
Expecting sure outcomes from technical analysis forecasting is a great misconception. As expectations are subject to a percentage of failure. Looking for a holy grail system that generates 90 percent successful outcomes is imaginary.
Also, technical analysis can't forecast unexpected extreme news events such as a terrorist attack in Europe, or an explosion in an oil field in Nigeria.
Technical analysts analyze and monitor the charts of securities to make trading or investment decisions.
A chart is simply a visual (graphical) representation of data. It represents the price movement with time. A chart quickly transforms a table of data into a clear visual representation of the information.
Because a technical analyst is mainly concerned with studying the charts to recognize patterns and trends, he is also called a "chartist".
The time period can be a day, a week, a month, or even intraday such as one hour, or even one minute.
Charts come in different styles. The main types of charts are line, bar, and candlestick charts.
A line chart is simply a line that connects the closing price for the security. For example, if the price of instrument "X" closed the trading day two days ago at $50, and closed yesterday's trading day at $51, then closed today at $53. We can represent these numbers visually by a line graph that connects closing prices as illustrated in the image below.
[Image: Line chart example showing closing prices connected by a line]
Image: technical-analysis-tutorial-line-chart
This is the most basic chart type. To construct a line chart for any security, you only need the closing price for that security for every time period.
The one-hour line chart is simply a line that connects the closing price (last transaction price) for every hour. While a weekly line chart connects the closing price for every week.
The line charts only provide part of the information, as they only show the closing price of the instrument, ignoring other important information – such as at what price the trading period opened or the highest price that instrument traded at during this period.
The bar chart takes this information into consideration. The bar chart represents the open, close, high, and low for the security within the specified time frame.
Every bar is a horizontal line. The highest point in the bar is the highest price that was recorded during the time period and the lowest point is the lowest price. The left vertical notch is the opening price of the time period, and the right vertical notch is the closing price.
[Image: Bar chart example showing OHLC (Open, High, Low, Close) bars]
Image: Bar chart - Forex Technical Analysis Tutorial
Note: You can change the time period on the main horizontal toolbar in the MetaTrader or TradingView platforms.
The candlestick charts are like the bar charts; however, they are just thicker. The horizontal bar is wider and that makes candlestick charts more visual.
[Image: Candlestick chart example with up and down candles]
Image: Candlestick anatomy showing body, wicks, open, close, high, and low
There are two main types of chart scales: linear and logarithmic.
The linear scale is the default scale for all charting platforms. The vertical price scale represents the dollar amount change in price. The distance between prices is equal – i.e., the distance between $1 and $2 is equal to the distance between $9 and $10.
[Image: Example chart on linear scale]
Image: Linear chart scale example
On the logarithmic scale, the vertical distance represents the percentage change in price.
That is – the distance between $1 and $2 is larger than the distance between $9 and $10. Because the percentage of movement from $1 to $2 is 100%, while from $9 to $10 is near 10 percent. So, the distance between $1 and $2 will be 10 times larger on the chart price scale.
[Image: Same chart on logarithmic scale]
Image: Logarithmic chart scale example
When to Use Logarithmic Scale
The rule of thumb for when to use a logarithmic scale is when the security's price makes a sharp parabolic movement. Also, it is better to use it if analyzing charts with a long history.
In most cases, you will be using linear charts, unless you will be analyzing a very long-term history of an instrument.
Note: All chart examples in this Technical Analysis Tutorial will be linear charts.
Important Note on Examples:
Most examples we introduce in this tutorial have successful outcomes. However, that doesn't mean that these tools and patterns are failure-proof, they are NOT. We just don't see value in showing examples of failed patterns.