Basic Chart Analysis Trends, trading ranges, and support and resistance

Basic Chart Analysis Trends, trading ranges, and support and resistance

Basic Chart Analysis: Trends, trading ranges, and support and

resistance

By Mark Etzkorn

If you've read The Technician's Basic Tool: The Price Chart, you're probably

familiar with the more popular chart types and how they display price

information But knowing the difference between a bar chart and a candlestick

chart is only

the beginning Obviously, what's important is making sense of the price

patterns that develop over time

Because price charts are a succinct record of price

action, learning how to analyze them is a logical first

step in the technical analysis journey Further,

traditional chart patterns are a good first stop on this

trip, because they explain many of the basic principles

of price movement We'll take a look at the simplest

kinds of chart patterns and what they reveal about

market behavior

Chart pattern myth vs reality

To the general public, the terms "technical analysis"

and "chart analysis" usually bring to mind images of

traders poring over price charts, deciphering hidden

To many, the term

"chart analysis" brings to mind images of traders poring over price charts, deciphering hidden patterns in much the same way a fortune teller would read tea leaves

patterns in much the same way a fortune teller would read tea leaves

Actually, despite the sometimes colorful names given to chart patterns, chart

analysis has a very common-sense goal: to locate price trends, congestion

areas, and points where trends are likely to reverse "Patterns" can consist of

a single price bar or dozens, and can trigger trades that last a few hours or a

few

months To start, we'll focus on a few major price patterns that illustrate the

most important principles of chart analysis

Keep in mind that many, if not most of the concepts we will discuss here are

equally applicable to intra-day, daily, weekly, or monthly charts However,

certain patterns, especially those that revolve around the open or closing prices,

will be relevant only on the daily time frame

Trends

Trend is one of the most important concepts in

charting and technical analysis All technical trading

techniques essentially consist of one of the following

approaches:

 Identifying trends after they have developed

and trading in their direction (buying into the

beginning of an uptrend or selling into the

beginning of a downtrend)

Catching the precise beginnings and ends of all trends is

unrealistic;

fortunately, you do not need to

 Entering trends after they have begun on corrections (or pullbacks)

 Identifying reversal points where trends seem likely to end and trading

in the opposite direction (selling into the end of an uptrend or buying into

the end of a downtrend)

Of course, catching the precise beginnings and ends of all trends is unrealistic;

fortunately, you don't need to But as a technical trader interested in finding

profitable price moves, you are always concerned with price trends on a

certain level, whether they last a few hours or several months

It is easy to intuitively understand what a price trend is: a continuing series of

daily (or hourly, weekly, monthly, and so on) price advances or declines A

standard definition of a trend is a series of higher price highs and price lows (for

an uptrend) or lower price highs and price lows (for a downtrend) The daily bar

chart in Figure 1 illustrates this definition of an uptrend

Figure 1 Sun Microsystems (SUNW), daily Uptrend preceded by trading range and

punctuated by corrections, or pullbacks Source: Omega

Research.

It is obvious from this example that even though the market is clearly in a strong overall uptrend, the rally is punctuated by occasional counter-trend downswings (corrections, pullbacks pick your term), the most notable

occurring between January and February 1999 (This correction happened to

take the form of a triangle, a pattern we will discuss in a future article.) A

trading range, or congestion period (see next section) preceded the uptrend.

Points A, B, C and D correspond to some of the more notable highs and lows throughout this uptrend, the largest of which (C and D) are referred to as

relative (or "reaction," or "swing") highs and lows Figure 2 shows a downtrend

on a 15- minute chart A, B, C and D mark some of the relative highs and lows

on this chart

Figure 2 America Online (AOL), 15-minute Downtrend and relative highs and

lows Source: Quote.com.

Of course, trends are relative, depending on the time frame you consider Figure

3 shows a somewhat random market that drops dramatically toward the end of

a roughly three-month period on a daily chart While this might not qualify as a downtrending market (until the steep sell-off at the end), it is definitely not an uptrend

Figure 3 Cisco (CSCO), daily Sideways price action ending with sharp break Source:

Omega Research.

This underscores the importance of putting market action in context by

consulting different time frame charts Price action on a weekly or monthly chart may determine whether or not you establish a position on a daily chart; behavior

on a daily chart will similarly influence your choices on an intraday basis