Trading guides you can test on a chart
Guides to reading candles, indicators and risk. Each one works through real price data, so you can check the idea against what the market actually did.
Reading candles and charts
- Candlestick Patterns: 5 to Learn FirstHammer, engulfing, doji, shooting star and marubozu, read on real charts: why confirmation matters and what a failed hammer looks like.5 min
- Bearish Candlestick Patterns: 7 Signals and ExamplesSeven bearish candlestick signals, what confirms each one, and three real 2024 cases from AMD, NVIDIA and Alphabet, including one that failed.5 min
- How to Read a Stock Chart, Step by StepRead swings, moving averages, volume and invalidation in a fixed order, using Microsoft's 2025 decline and recovery as the worked example.5 min
- Support and Resistance: Zones, Breakouts, FakeoutsMark support and resistance as zones, judge a breakout by its close and volume, and compare NVIDIA's 2024 breakout with two Alphabet breakouts that failed.5 min
- Head and Shoulders Pattern: How to Read ItHow a head and shoulders top forms, how to measure its target, and three real 2022–2024 cases: one hit, one fell short, one never triggered.5 min
- Fibonacci Retracement: How to Draw and Read ItThe arithmetic behind 38.2%, 50% and 61.8%, one pullback that stopped almost exactly on a level, and one where every level failed.4 min
Indicators
- Trading Volume: Relative Volume and VWAP ExplainedHow to read volume against its own average, why three 4–7× volume days in 2024 ended three different ways, and how an anchored VWAP works.4 min
- RSI Explained: What 30, 50 and 70 Really MeanHow RSI(14) is calculated, why "above 70 means sell" fails in trends, and what NVDA's 2024 run shows about reading it.5 min
- MACD Explained: Crossovers, Zero Line, HistogramHow MACD is built from two moving averages, what its histogram shows first, and how META's early-2025 chart treated every crossover.5 min
- EMA vs SMA: Which Moving Average Should You Use?The arithmetic behind simple and exponential moving averages, and what Microsoft's 2025 chart shows about lag, whipsaws and crossovers.4 min
- Bollinger Bands: Squeezes, Breakouts and Head FakesHow the bands and bandwidth are calculated, and two real squeezes: AMD's October 2025 expansion and Apple's September 2024 head fake.4 min
Risk, timing and practice
- Risk Management: Position Size, Stops and the 1% RuleWork out position size from your stop, not your gut. A full JPM example with real ATR, a swing-low stop and drawdown math.5 min
- Paper Trading: How to Practice Without Fooling YourselfWhat paper trading can and cannot teach, how it differs from backtesting, and a journal format that turns practice into feedback.5 min
- Day Trading vs Swing Trading: What Really DiffersDay and swing trading face different enemies: costs and speed for one, overnight gaps for the other. Real 2025 range and gap numbers.5 min
- Multi-Timeframe Analysis: Weekly vs Daily ChartsUse a higher time frame for direction and a lower one for timing. A real NKE case where the daily and weekly charts disagreed.5 min
- Gap Trading Basics: Do Gaps Really Fill?Why stocks gap, how often a 3% gap fills the same day (about 1 in 5 in our data), and what META's 2024 earnings gap teaches.5 min