Topic

Technical Analysis

The indicators, levels and patterns traders read off a price chart, each defined, worked through with numbers and put inside a set of rules.

Almost every indicator on a chart is arithmetic on the same four prices: the open, high, low and close of each bar. That is why piling them up rarely helps. Two momentum readings calculated from the same closes will agree with each other most of the time, and a chart with six of them says little more than a chart with two.

Start with the definitions if a term is new, then read the strategies, which use the indicators as filters and triggers inside a trading plan. The Fibonacci and moving average calculators do the level and average sums for you and print each step.

Strategies

Guides

Definitions

  • Average true range

    A volatility measure from J. Welles Wilder that averages each bar's true range, which counts overnight gaps, to show how far a stock typically moves in one bar.

  • Bollinger Bands

    Two lines plotted two standard deviations above and below a 20-period simple moving average of price, from John Bollinger, so the gap between them widens and narrows with volatility.

  • Breakout

    A move through a price level that had held, usually resistance above or support below, which traders read as the start of a new leg in the direction of the break.

  • Exponential moving average

    A moving average that gives recent closing prices more weight than older ones, so it turns sooner than a simple moving average of the same length when price changes direction.

  • Fibonacci retracement

    Horizontal lines drawn at fixed percentages of a completed price swing, most often 38.2%, 50% and 61.8%, where traders watch for a pullback to stall before the trend resumes.

  • Golden cross and death cross

    A golden cross is the 50-day moving average crossing above the 200-day moving average; a death cross is the 50-day crossing below it. Both are read as a change in the long trend.

  • MACD

    An indicator made of the gap between a 12-period and a 26-period exponential moving average, a 9-period average of that gap called the signal line, and a histogram of the difference.

  • Relative strength index

    A momentum oscillator from J. Welles Wilder that scales recent average gains against recent average losses into a reading from 0 to 100, usually over 14 periods.

Calculators