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Clear filtersThe Trend Pullback Set-Up
The plainest continuation shape there is: an established uptrend, a dip into a rising reference that has already held twice, and a resumption from it.
The Rally Fade Set-Up
The bearish mirror of the trend pullback: a downtrend, a rally into a falling reference that has already capped it twice, and a resumption from there.
The Flat Base Set-Up
A ceiling price has been turned back from several times, a range that tightens underneath it, and the session that finally closes above it.
The Range Break Set-Up
A rectangle with both sides working — a floor and a ceiling each tested more than once — and the session that finally closes outside one of them.
The Rounding Bottom Set-Up
A decline that slows, flattens, and turns without ever making a dramatic low, over months rather than weeks — and the old high that ends it.
What a Stock Actually Is
A share is a legal claim on a company's assets and earnings, ranked behind everyone else with a claim. That ordering explains most of how equities behave.
How a Stock Exchange Works
An exchange is a matching engine surrounded by rules. Understanding the order book, the market maker and the auctions explains why liquidity appears and disappears at particular moments.
Order Types, and What Each One Guarantees
Every order type trades certainty of price against certainty of execution. There is no order that guarantees both, and most execution surprises come from expecting one to.
The Bid-Ask Spread
The spread is the price of immediacy, paid on every round trip. It is also the most reliable live read on how liquid a stock actually is.
Market Hours, Premarket and After-Hours
US equities trade for six and a half regular hours and many more extended ones. The extended sessions run on different rules, thinner books and prices that frequently do not survive the open.
Market Capitalization
Market cap is price multiplied by share count. It is the market's price for the whole equity, and it is the single most useful number for deciding whether two companies are comparable at all.
ETFs, Index Funds and Mutual Funds
A fund is a basket sold as one security. The differences that matter are how it trades, what decides its holdings, and what it charges.
The Income Statement, Line by Line
The income statement records performance over a period. It runs from revenue at the top to net income at the bottom, and each subtraction along the way answers a different question.
The Balance Sheet, Line by Line
A snapshot on one date of what a company owns, what it owes and what belongs to shareholders. It has to balance, which is a constraint that makes several things checkable.
From Revenue to Net Income
The walk down the income statement, and what each stage is capable of telling you about the business that the stage above it cannot.
Earnings Per Share
Profit divided by shares. Both halves move, and the denominator moving is what makes the diluted figure the one that matters.
The Price-to-Earnings Ratio
The most quoted number in equities, and the most misread. It compares price to one year of profit and says nothing at all about the years after it.
Dividends: Yield, Payout and Safety
A dividend is a discretionary distribution. The yield is trivially calculated and the interesting question is always whether the company can keep paying it.
Gross, Operating and Net Margin
Margins convert absolute profit into a rate, which is what makes companies of different sizes comparable. Each of the three answers a different question.
What Technical Analysis Is, and What It Is Not
Technical analysis studies price and trading volume to describe the balance of supply and demand. It describes conditions; it does not forecast outcomes.
Moving Averages: Simple and Exponential
The most used indicator there is. An average of recent closes, redrawn each bar, which converts a jagged series into a slope.
The Golden Cross and the Death Cross
Two named events describing the 50-day moving average crossing the 200-day. They are widely reported, heavily lagging, and describe a trend that has already turned.
RSI: The Relative Strength Index
A bounded oscillator comparing the size of recent gains to recent losses. It measures stretch, and the conventional thresholds are conventions rather than rules.
Volume and On-Balance Volume
Trading volume measures participation. It is the one input that is not a transformation of price, which is what makes it worth reading on its own.
Reading a Candlestick
Each candle compresses a period of trading into four prices. Learning to read the body and the wicks is the single highest-return skill in chart reading.
Support, Resistance and Breakouts
Prices where buying or selling has repeatedly been heavy enough to stall a move. The mechanism is order flow and memory, not magic numbers.
Trendlines and Channels
A straight line through successive highs or lows, describing the slope of a move. Useful, and more subjective than almost anything else on a chart.
Timeframes and Multi-Timeframe Analysis
The timeframe decides what is signal and what is noise. The same price series produces contradictory readings at different aggregations, and both readings are correct.
Chart Styles: Candles, Bars, Line, Area and Heikin-Ashi
Each style discards something different. Knowing what a style is throwing away is what stops it from misleading you.
Drawing Tools and How to Use Them
Drawings are a record of an analysis, and they are also the easiest way to convince yourself of something that is not there.
Real-Time and Delayed Market Data
Market data is licensed, and a delayed feed is a licensing outcome rather than a technical one. Knowing which you are looking at matters for anything time-sensitive.
Price Alerts
A notification when price reaches a level. It is a small feature with a specific and underrated function: it lets a decision be made before the moment it applies.
EDGAR: The Filing Database
Every filing a US registrant submits is public, free, and searchable within moments of being accepted. It is the single most underused resource in equity research.
The 10-K: The Annual Report
The most complete document a public company produces. Audited, comprehensive, and structured identically across every registrant, which is what makes it navigable.
The 10-Q: The Quarterly Report
A lighter, unaudited version of the annual report, filed for the first three quarters. Its value lies in the comparison to the same quarter last year.
What the Federal Reserve Actually Does
The US central bank has a dual mandate and a small set of tools. Understanding what it controls directly, and what it only influences, removes most of the confusion around it.
The Federal Funds Rate
One overnight rate between banks, and the single lever from which almost every other rate in the economy is derived.
CPI: The Consumer Price Index
The best-known inflation measure and one of the highest-impact scheduled releases. What moves markets is the surprise against expectations, not the level.
The Jobs Report
Monthly employment data from two separate surveys that regularly disagree. Along with CPI it is the highest-impact scheduled release of the month.
Position Sizing
How much to trade is a separate decision from what to trade, and it is the one that determines whether a losing run is survivable.
Stop Losses: Types and Placement
A stop is a decision made in advance about when a position is wrong. Where it sits should follow from the structure of the chart rather than from a preferred dollar amount.
Risk and Reward
The distance to a target divided by the distance to a stop. Useful for comparing opportunities, and meaningless without a realistic probability attached.
Drawdown and the Arithmetic of Recovery
Losses and the gains needed to recover them are not symmetric, and the asymmetry gets rapidly worse. This single table is the argument for every risk control there is.
Writing the Plan Down
A plan that exists only in your head changes to accommodate whatever you want to do. Writing it down is what makes it a constraint rather than a preference.
FOMO and Chasing
Entering because a move is already happening rather than because a plan said to. It is the most expensive common error because it systematically buys the worst prices.
Loss Aversion and the Disposition Effect
Losses are felt more intensely than equivalent gains. The documented consequence is selling winners early and holding losers too long, which is the opposite of what the arithmetic wants.
Keeping a Journal
Memory reconstructs past decisions to fit what happened afterwards. A contemporaneous record is the only defence, and it is the only route to knowing what a method actually does.
Anchoring
An arbitrary number influences a subsequent judgement. In markets the anchor is usually a price, and the most common one is what you paid.