Technical Analysis or TA

Is an analysis methodology for forecasting the direction of prices through the study of past market movements and trends, primarily price and volume.

Stock markets & Crypto might seem like they move randomly but with the help of TA we can get an edge and somewhat predict some of it's movements

We ain't going to the moon if there’s not much volume… We're also not going to crash! So low volume means a sideways movement at least in the short term.

Nothing is certain

Everything here is a guide and not pure science, these things will not always work. I recommend always checking at least 2 different indicators as they often consider different things. One might be telling you it’s a good time to buy where another could be indicating the opposite.

Use candles please DON’T use the line graph!

Candles tell you so much more!

From one candle along you can see the volume in relation to the candles around it, the Open, Close, High and Low for it's time frame. It can be very helpful to see prices that were temporarily reached but then reversed. this There are many (probably hundreds) of candlestick patterns that can be an indication or confirmation of future price movements. Trends: Try to draw a line touching the top of at least 3 candles for down trend (the bottom for up trend), the more candles the line touches the stronger the trend. This is a simple way to see if there is a change in trend (A candle breaks through the line by more than a little bit and closes there)

Wedges & Triangle are some of the most powerful chart patterns.

Draw the trend line above and below and see where they come together. Depending on the shape and slant it might mean a bullish or bearish breakout but either way at the point you can expect a bigger move. (I don’t find this reliable on it’s own and usually combine it with the RSI or another indicator to to confirm)

Right-Angled triangles seem to be the most reliable indication of a move. If the Hypotenuse is above the price it's known as a descending triangle and will usually lead to a downward move. The opposite goes for Ascending triangles which have a 60-70% chance of breaking to the upside.

Basically this is a method of seeing trends in zig-zag wave patterns

There are a lot of rules about Elliot Wave; but to over simplify things the markets main trend is a series of 5 waves. (Waves 1, 3 and 5 are the bigger waves in the direction of the trend while 2 & 4 are smaller counter trend moves) Other important take-aways are that wave 3 is usually the longest but cannot be the shortest wave.

There are many patterns in charting some of the common ones are

Head & Shoulders

This Bearish pattern signals a trend reversal and can be described as a zig zag that forms a high, followed by another higher high followed by a lower high roughly resembling the shape of a head.

Cup & Handle

This Bullish pattern is a rounded drop in price, followed by return to the original price range followed by a smaller drop roughly resembling the shape of a tea cup.

Tell you the average movement of the last x bars

Most important moving averages

Everyone has different opinions on this but Traders generally pay attention to these:
21, 55, 200 period Moving Average

Buy signal: when shorter (faster ma) crosses over and ends up higher than the bigger (slower ma) Sell signal: when shorter (faster ma) crosses over and ends up lower than the bigger (slower ma)

There are many oscillators

RSI

RSI tells us if something is overbought (about to correct) or oversold(about to moon). Again oversimplified it’s the distance of the current price from the moving average price. The normal price range is from 30-70 below 30 is oversold and above 70 is overbought.

MacD

Macd stands for: Moving Average Convergence Divergence is a trend-following momentum indicator that shows the relationship between the 12 & 26 period moving averages.

Bollinger Bands

These show the volatility and likely price movements, they lag a little (if there’s a sudden spike the band will take a candle or two to adjust) I try to play with these when there’s a sideways movement as the top middle line and bottom of the bands act as support and resistance. With this you can enter trades at the bottom of a band and know you should sell between the middle or top.

The past tends to repeat itself.

If you look at any chart you will see that a lot of price ranges that were not broken on the first attempt later become support and don’t immediately get passed when the trend change direction. This is expecially true for numbers that have a psychological affect eg big even’s 1000, 5000 10000 etc… maybe smaller numbers depending on timeframes.

Fibonacci retracements

Fibonacci is everywhere in trading, you will find the fib levels on trading tools tend to line up with previous support and big whole numbers. When I say level or number I mean a rang not an exact number. The most important fib ratios in crypto are usually 0.768, 0.618, 0.382 and 1.618 extension.