Trading reference: 96 articles from candles to Smart Money

A free trading reference: market structure, liquidity, order blocks, Wyckoff, Smart Money, indicators. 96 topics explained in plain language.

Basics

What the market is and who trades on it Price goes to where other people's orders are stacked: a large player needs someone to buy from and someone to
What forex is Forex is exchanging one currency for another. You buy euros with dollars and gain if the euro appreciates.
What cryptocurrency is Crypto trades with no weekends and moves more sharply than ordinary currencies. The rules for reading the char
The candle and its anatomy One candle is price over a slice of time: where it opened, where it closed and how far it got to travel.
Timeframes A timeframe is how much time fits into one candle. The same market looks different on different timeframes.
Sessions and killzones The market lives around the clock, but it really moves for a few hours a day — when London and New York are wo
Order types An order is how you enter a trade: right now at the current price, or in advance at the price you want.
Spread, commission, swap Every trade costs money before price has gone anywhere at all. Three lines of expense, right here.
Lot and position size Volume is how much you buy. It decides how much money each step of price gives you or takes away.
Leverage Leverage lets you trade a size larger than your account. Profit grows, and so does loss.

Classic technical analysis

The trend and its types A trend is price making new highs, or new lows, again and again in one direction.
Swings: HH, HL, LH, LL A swing is a noticeable turn in price. All structure is built from them: higher and higher means rising, lower
Support and resistance lines Places price has already turned from. Everyone sees them — which is why price comes there first.
Trendlines A line along the trend: connect the lows in a rise or the highs in a fall and watch whether the slope holds.
Channels Two parallel lines with price travelling between them. Useful not as a corridor to trade but as a map — where
Breakout A breakout is price going beyond a level and closing there. If it only clipped it with a wick and came back, t
False breakout Price popped beyond a level and came straight back. That's how the stops of everyone who believed the break ge
Retest After a break price often comes back to the same level and tests it from the other side.
Levels and round numbers Round figures like 1.1000 or 100,000 aren't special in any way, but orders pile up on them en masse — so price
Fibonacci A grid of levels stretched over a move to estimate how far the pullback will go.

Candlestick patterns

The candle and its anatomy One candle is price over a slice of time: where it opened, where it closed and how far it got to travel.
Hammer A candle with a long wick down: price was pressed lower but bought back. It appears at the bottom of a move.
Inverted hammer A long wick up at the bottom: buyers tested their strength. Weak on its own, it needs the next bar.
Hanging man The same hammer, but at the top after a rise. One shape, the opposite meaning — where price came from is what
Shooting star A long wick up at the top: price was yanked higher and immediately returned. No buyers left up there.
Engulfing One candle covers the previous one entirely. Sentiment turned around in a single slice of time.
Doji It opened and closed at almost the same point. Nobody won — the market is thinking it over.
Marubozu A candle with almost no wicks: price went one way the whole slice and never pulled back.
Harami A small candle inside the previous large one. The move has run out of breath, but the reversal isn't confirmed
Inside bar A candle that fits entirely inside the previous one's range. The market is compressing before the breakout.

Chart patterns

Head and shoulders Three peaks, the middle one higher than the outer two. The classic sign that the rally is over.
Double top and double bottom Price hit the same spot twice and could not get through. The second time it turns more often than not.
Triple top The same as a double top, but with three touches. The more obvious the pattern, the more likely a poke before
Triangles Price squeezes into a corner: the swings get smaller and smaller until it fires off one way.
Flag and pennant A short breather after a sharp move. Most often the move continues the same way.
Wedge Looks like a triangle, but both boundaries slope the same way. A sign that the move is running out of steam.
Diamond First the swings expand, then they narrow. A rare pattern, more often seen at tops.
Rectangle Price walks between two horizontal boundaries. Inside a corridor like that, someone is usually building a posi

Indicators

Moving averages A line of the average price over the last N candles. It smooths noise, but it always shows the past.
RSI An indicator of the speed of the move, from 0 to 100. It shows how sharply price moved, not where it is going.
ATR The average range of a candle. You need it to know what a normal stop is for this instrument.
Volume: tick and real Volume on forex shows the number of trades, not the amount of money. On an exchange it is real. Do not confuse
Why indicators lag Every indicator is calculated from candles that have already closed. It does not predict, it retells.

Divergences

Classic divergence Price made a new high, the indicator did not. The move is going on with less strength behind it.
Hidden divergence The reverse picture: price pulled back less than the indicator. A sign that the trend will continue.
Extended divergence Price made two peaks at the same height, the indicator did not. An in-between case.
SMT divergence Two related instruments came apart: one made a new high, the other did not. One of them is lying.
Three-drive pattern Three identical pushes in a row in one direction. By the third, participants usually run out.
When divergence lies In a strong trend divergence can hold for months. On its own it is not a signal.

Wyckoff

Accumulation and its phases Price fell for a long time and settled into a sideways corridor. Inside it a large player quietly buys from th
Distribution The same thing in reverse: price rose for a long time, went sideways, and there what was accumulated gets sold

Smart Money

Market structure Structure is the sequence of price turns. As long as highs and lows keep rising, the trend is up.
BOS — a break of structure with the trend Price broke the previous high in the direction of the trend. The trend is confirmed and continues.
CHoCH — the first break against the trend The first break against the trend. The first serious sign that direction is changing.
Nested structure Small trends live inside big ones. Every scale has its own structure, and they must not be confused.
Multi-timeframe Take direction from the higher timeframe and the entry point from the lower one. Never the other way round.
What liquidity is Liquidity is a cluster of other people's orders and stops. Simply put: a place with someone to sell to and som
EQH and EQL Two or three highs at the same height. A flat line is an open invitation — and someone always comes for it.
Trend liquidity In a trend, stops pile up behind every pullback. That is why price moves in bursts rather than a straight line
Stop-loss liquidity Your stop is somebody else's matching order. Placed in an obvious spot, it becomes a target.
Inducement A small move that lures you in early — right before the real one.
Cause: liquidity building up The longer price sits in a corridor, the more orders build up there and the stronger the exit will be.
Effect: liquidity collected What was accumulated eventually gets taken: price travels fast to where the orders were sitting.
A sweep or a real breakout How to tell a real move beyond a level from a stop hunt: by the candle close and the speed of the return.
Imbalance and FVG Price covered a stretch so fast that almost nothing traded there. It likes coming back to close those gaps.
Supply and demand zones Not a line but a band the strong move started from. Price returns there for the volume left behind.
The quartile grid Divide any zone into four parts: 0, 25, 50, 75, 100 percent. The same markup for everything.
Premium and discount Above the middle of a range is expensive, below it is cheap. Buying makes sense in the cheap half.
Order block The last candle against the move before a strong push. Taken as the place a large player entered from.
Breaker block A zone that failed and got broken through. After the break it works the other way round.
STB and BTS — zones after a trend change Zones that appear only after the trend has already turned. Selling becomes buying and the other way round.
Mitigation Price returns to a zone to fill the part of the position left there. After that the zone no longer works.
The range A corridor between two boundaries where price goes back and forth. The market spends most of its time in one.
Quartiles inside the range The same division into quarters, but for the corridor. It shows where inside it is expensive and where cheap.
Pokes A move beyond the corridor boundary with a return. A Spring at the bottom, a UTAD at the top — different names

Applying it

Zone of interest The place on the chart where you wait for price. Not a point but a band — with markup telling you where inside
Entry confirmation Wait until price itself shows the reversal instead of entering on an assumption. The stop-loss comes out short
Where to place the stop The stop-loss goes where the idea stops working, not where the money stops hurting.
Where to take profit The target goes where the market can actually fill you: at the opposite cluster of orders.
Partial close Close part of the position in profit and run the rest. It calms you down, but it lowers the average result.
Setup checklist A list of conditions that must line up before entry. Not lined up — no trade.
Risk per trade How much money you are willing to lose on one trade. Counted as a percentage of the account, not as position s
Position size Size is calculated from the distance to the stop-loss, not the other way round. Stop first, size second.
Expectancy What one trade brings on average. If the number is below zero, luck is not the problem.
Win rate versus R:R You can have more losing trades than winning ones and still grow the account — if the wins are bigger than the
Drawdown How far the account has fallen from its peak. The main figure a trader is judged by.
Risk of ruin The probability of losing the account with your settings. Calculated in advance, not after the fact.
Losing streaks A streak of five to eight losses in a row is normal mathematics, not a broken system.
Correlations Two similar trades are one trade at double the size. Risk adds up, it does not divide.

Psychology

Crowd emotions The crowd is predictable: fear and greed turn up at the same places on the chart.
Loss aversion Losing money hurts more psychologically than earning the same amount feels good. Hence losses held too long.
Outcome bias A trade closed in profit was not necessarily the right one. Judge the decision, not the result.
Tilt The state where, after a run of losses, you are no longer trading by the rules. The only cure is a break.
FOMO The fear of missing the move: you get in right at the end because "it's already going without me".
Revenge trading An attempt to win a loss back immediately. The fastest way to lose what is left of the account.
Survivorship bias You only see the people it worked out for. Nobody shows you the ones who blew up on the same strategy.
Discipline Discipline is not willpower, it is rules written down in advance that you do not have to decide on again.