The staircase, and why one step proves nothing

What the Lesson Covers

1. 0:00Some advances do not run. They climb in stages, and the stages are the whole point.
2. 0:06The shape. A short run, a tight shelf, another run from the top of it, repeated three or four times. No shelf ever dips into the one below it.
3. 0:17Why it forms. Each shelf is a small flag. Three of them at three prices says demand is being replaced as the price rises, which one shelf cannot say.
4. 0:27The levels that matter. The current shelf's high and low, the previous shelf's range, and how tall the runs have been. The last one shows whether the pace is holding.
5. 0:37Where it completes. Each step completes above the current shelf's high. The sequence stops holding when price trades back down into the previous shelf's range.
6. 0:48How often it follows through. Sixty-three to sixty-nine per cent. High, because it asks a market that has repeated itself three times to do it once more.
7. 0:57The same shape failing. Here a step goes the wrong way. Price cannot hold the shelf it just built and settles into the tread below, faster than any run took to climb.
8. 1:08The tells. Shelves that overlap instead of stacking, runs getting smaller each time, or a shelf now longer than the runs on either side.
9. 1:18One pause is a flag. Three is a statement about who is buying.