MAD Academy
309 explanations covering equities, bonds, currencies, the Fed, fundamentals, technicals, charting and SEC filings, cross-linked so one idea leads to the next.
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In order, if you are new
The shapes we hunt
See all 24 set-ups →Each one is written up in full — the price points that define it, where it completes, how often it follows through and what its failure looks like. These six carry a training video anybody can watch.
MAD Academy Training Videos
Short animated lessons that go with the articles — charts that draw themselves, tables that build a row at a time, and the number that matters counted up on screen. Most run under a minute; the trading set-up lessons run to about ninety seconds because they carry a whole reference entry. None of them is a screen recording of somebody talking.
Set-ups
Reading a bull flag by its proportions
Reading a bull flag by its proportions
The pole, the drift, the single price that completes it, and the failure that looks exactly like the success for one bar.
Set-ups
The bounce that nobody buys
The bounce that nobody buys
Why a shallow, quiet recovery after a hard decline is the most common continuation shape there is, and why it squeezes so violently when it is wrong.
Set-ups
When the range squeezes to nothing
When the range squeezes to nothing
A pennant is a flag whose pause has no direction. Why the contraction matters more than the outline, and why the trigger level moves every bar.
Browse by subject
Twenty-four named shapes, bullish and bearish, each with the price points that define it, where it completes, how often it follows through and what it looks like when it fails.
What is actually being bought and sold — shares, bonds, currencies, commodities and funds — and the machinery of the exchange that matches the two sides.
The three statements a company files, line by line, and how to read what they say about the business behind the ticker.
The arithmetic that turns a statement into a comparison: multiples, margins, returns on capital, and what each one hides.
Moving averages, oscillators, volatility bands and volume measures — how each is calculated, what it actually claims, and where it fails.
Reading price directly: the anatomy of a candle, where support and resistance come from, and the shapes traders have named.
The settings underneath every chart — timeframe, scale, price adjustment, session coverage — and why two charts of the same stock disagree.
Every form a public company has to file, what it is required to say, and how to find the paragraph that matters without reading 200 pages.
Rates, inflation, employment and growth: what the Federal Reserve actually controls, and which releases move markets.
The part that decides whether an edge survives contact with an account: position size, stops, expectancy and the cost of getting filled.
The documented biases that cost money, and the process habits that blunt them.
The plumbing between a decision and a position: account types, margin, how an order is routed, what protection exists and what a statement is actually telling you.
Beyond Treasuries: corporate and municipal bonds, ratings and spreads, the options embedded in them, and the difference between owning a bond and owning a bond fund.
Options and futures as instruments rather than lottery tickets: what the Greeks measure, how the common structures work, and where the risk actually is.
What a blockchain is, who is holding the asset when an exchange does, and how the regulated wrappers differ from the thing they wrap.
The decisions above any individual position: allocation, rebalancing, what to measure performance against, and the arithmetic of taking money back out.
The documented return factors, and the far longer list of ways a backtest can be wrong before anybody trades it.
How the rules work — holding periods, cost basis, wash sales, account types — described as mechanics. Nothing here is tax advice, and circumstances differ.
Who regulates what, how to check a firm or a person before sending money, the recognisable shapes fraud takes, and what recourse exists afterwards.
A guide to every surface on the platform — Deep Dive, Charting, the Scanner, the Heatmap, Sectors, Corporate Events, Institutional Flows — and the methodology behind what they show.
Recently updated
All 309The Ascending Triangle Set-Up
A flat ceiling with a rising floor underneath it: buyers arriving earlier at every dip while one price keeps capping the rallies.
The Bear Flag Set-Up
A sharp decline, then a shallow drift back up against it, and a floor under that drift which is the one price the whole set-up is read from.
The Bear Pennant Set-Up
A hard decline followed by a coil rather than a bounce: highs stepping down, lows stepping up, and a range that runs out of room.
The Bull Flag Set-Up
A sharp advance, then a shallow drift against it, and a ceiling on that drift which is the one price the whole set-up is read from.
The Bull Pennant Set-Up
The same pause as a bull flag drawn as a triangle rather than a channel: the highs step down, the lows step up, and the range squeezes toward nothing.
The Cup and Handle Set-Up
A rounded decline and recovery back to a prior high, then a small drift below it, and a test of the level the whole structure is organised around.