Imagine a wide and expansive battlefield. On each side stand thousands of warriors determined to overwhelm their foes and claim further enemy territory for their own. When the combatants first engage, the battle lines are fluid, moving in one direction, then reversing course and returning to where they started. This give and take goes on […]

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Charts can help technicians identify potential buying and selling opportunities, including those signaled by support and resistance bounces and breaks. Let’s define both, starting with bounces. A support bounce occurs in a series of bars at support. Investools instructors refer to this as a CAHOLD, or a Close Above the High Of the Low Day. […]

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Price patterns are probably the most recognizable technical analysis technique. This may be because of their simplicity. However, some traders make them more complicated than they need to be. Price patterns are really just another form of support and resistance. They occur because support and resistance form horizontally and diagonally, often creating common shapes. Let’s […]

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Identifying trend, support and resistance levels, and price patterns leaves a lot up to the discretion of the trader. Some traders prefer less-discretionary trading methods. This is because emotions can cloud a trader’s judgement. Using indicators and oscillators is one way to reduce the degree of discretion required in technical analysis. Indicators like moving averages […]

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At first glance, the term “stochastics” looks like something out of a 10th grade math book—it seems vaguely familiar, but you don’t really know what it means. And if that’s the case for you, you’re not alone. Even some veteran traders have a hard time understanding the mechanics behind this technical indicator. So let’s break […]

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“Buy low, sell high.” You’ve heard this phrase a million times. It’s so wired into your brain, it seems easy to determine where a stock’s high and low points are. In reality, to find appropriate and consistent entries (lows) and exits (highs) might just be one of the hardest skills to master. The good news? […]

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Look to the sky near twilight from any number of towns that dot the length of the California coast and there’s a good chance you’ll see a long, glowing contrail—the sign that a rocket has recently been launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base. These rockets, designed to place communications satellites into orbit, have mythical names […]

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You would be hard-pressed to find anyone who didn’t recognize the name Leonardo da Vinci, the Italian scientist, inventor, and painter of the Mona Lisa. Same goes for fellow Italian Galileo Galilei, the mathematician who worked to prove that the Earth revolved around the Sun and not the other way around. But not so many […]

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Key Takeaways Trends—up, down, and sideways—are common technical analysis basics used by investors Technical analysis can be helpful for investors to complement fundamental analysis Learn how to use moving averages to help identify trends Sir Isaac Newton developed the laws of motion to understand and describe the relationships between an object, the forces acting on it, and its motion. One of […]

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Key Takeaways Moving average convergence/divergence (MACD) can help gauge the strength of a trend The Relative Strength Index (RSI) can help identify when a stock may be “overbought” or “oversold”  The Commodity Channel Index (CCI) can help gauge excess buying or selling pressure If you remember your high school physics class, you might recall momentum […]

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