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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
A market order fills immediately at the best available price; a limit order fills only at a set price or better. Every order type trades certainty of price against certainty of execution, and none guarantees both.
The Bid-Ask Spread
The bid-ask spread is the gap between the highest bid and the lowest ask. It is the price of immediacy, paid on every round trip, and the most reliable live read on how liquid a stock is.
Market Hours, Premarket and After-Hours
US stocks trade in a regular session from 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Eastern, plus premarket and after-hours sessions. The extended sessions run on different rules, thinner books and less reliable prices.
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
A moving average is the average of recent closes, redrawn each bar. A simple one weights every close equally; an exponential one weights recent closes more, so it turns sooner. Both turn a jagged series into a slope.
The Golden Cross and the Death Cross
A golden cross is the 50-day moving average crossing above the 200-day; a death cross is the reverse. Both are widely reported, heavily lagging, and describe a trend that has already turned.
RSI: The Relative Strength Index
RSI (Relative Strength Index) is a 0 to 100 oscillator comparing recent gains with recent losses. Above 70 is called overbought and below 30 oversold, and those thresholds are conventions rather than rules.
Volume and On-Balance Volume
Trading volume is the number of shares that changed hands. It measures participation, and it is the one chart input that is not a transformation of price, which is what makes it worth reading on its own.
Relative Volume (RVOL)
Relative volume (RVOL) is a stock's volume divided by its own average volume, so 3 means three times the usual participation. It measures how unusual activity is, and says nothing about direction.
Reading a Candlestick
A candlestick shows a period's open, high, low and close. The body spans open to close and the wicks reach the extremes. Reading the body and the wicks is the highest-return skill in chart reading.
Support, Resistance and Breakouts
Support is a price area where buying has repeatedly stopped a decline; resistance is where selling has stopped an advance. A breakout is a move through one. The mechanism is order flow and memory.
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
A chart's timeframe is how much trading each bar summarizes. It decides what is signal and what is noise, and the same price series can give contradictory readings on different timeframes, both 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 price alert is a notification sent when a stock reaches a level chosen in advance. Its underrated function is that it lets a decision be made before the moment it applies.
What a Stock Alert Service Is
A stock alert service sends a notification when something specific happens in a stock: a price level is reached, a scan condition is met, or an analyst publishes a setup with its levels.
Stock Scanners and Screeners
A stock scanner tests a whole market against conditions such as price, volume, relative volume or gap size, and returns the stocks that match. The result is a shortlist to study on a chart.
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 a Catalyst Is
A catalyst is an event that changes what the market knows about a stock, such as earnings, an 8-K, an offering or an economic release. Price reacts to the distance between the news and what was expected.
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
Position sizing is choosing how many shares to trade so that a stopped-out trade loses a fixed, chosen amount. It is separate from what to trade, and it decides whether a losing run is survivable.
Stop Losses: Types and Placement
A stop loss is a price set in advance at which a position is closed because the reason for it no longer holds. Where it sits should follow from the chart's structure rather than a preferred dollar amount.
Risk and Reward
The risk-reward ratio is the distance to a target divided by the distance to a stop. It is useful for comparing opportunities, and meaningless without a realistic probability of reaching each.
Drawdown and the Arithmetic of Recovery
A drawdown is the fall from a peak to a later low. Recovering takes a larger gain than the loss (a 50 percent loss needs a 100 percent gain), and the asymmetry worsens quickly as losses deepen.
Writing the Plan Down
A trading plan is a written set of rules for entries, exits, position size and account limits. A plan held only in memory changes to fit whatever is tempting; writing it down makes it a constraint.