How to Read Stock Charts
A Beginner's Guide to Price, Time and Trading Charts — Read Any Chart with Confidence
Open any chart. Know exactly what you are looking at.
None of it is complicated. Nobody ever explained it to you.
The first time you look at a stock chart, it can feel like everyone else was handed a key you missed: a line that climbs and falls, a wall of little red and green blocks, numbers down the side that change when you click something.
This book starts from nothing and stays in plain English, with no jargon, no math beyond percentages, and no experience required. By the last page you'll be able to open any chart, anywhere, and say what it shows and what it does not.
It is built to be checked, not believed. Every real chart comes from one of four American companies, chosen by a rule fixed before anything was drawn and printed in full at the back, and every counted figure names its window, its method, and its source.
It is the starting point of Reading the Chart, which works through everything already on a price chart before any indicator is added.
Inside the book
- Reading the four prices behind every session, drawn as a line, bar, or candlestick chart
- Telling a linear scale from a log scale, and knowing when the difference matters
- Choosing a timeframe, daily, weekly, or monthly, and seeing what each one hides
- Setting the window, and why the same six months can look like nothing or like a stalled recovery
- Spotting a cut axis, a stretched chart, or a hand-picked window before it persuades you
- What splits and dividends do to a chart, and why yesterday's price isn't the one you remember
- A short routine to run on any chart before you form an opinion
Look inside
A few pages from the paperback. Select a page to see it full size.
- The contents
- The opening of Chapter 1
- Figure 7.3: a year of JPMorgan Chase as candles
- Figure 9.3: a long history on a log scale
Who it's for
New investors and traders, anyone who has opened a charting app and felt the menus were written for somebody else, and readers who would rather be taught something than sold something.
