164 figures showing how each study behaves on real price data — what it marks, and where it misleads. Open one to read what it is and step through the rest with the arrows. They are teaching figures, not calls.
164 charts
Accounts, tax & money 30
The 401(k) and the matchA workplace retirement plan. Contributions come out of your pay before you see them, which is most of why it works.The 529 education planAn account for education costs. Contributions are after-tax, growth is untaxed, and withdrawals are tax-free when spent on qualifying education…Which account to fill firstA rough consensus order, and the reasoning behind each stepAccrual vs cash accountingRecord it when money moves. Simple, and how most people think.The backdoor Roth, explainedDirect Roth contributions phase out above an income threshold. Conversions have no such limit.The balance sheetA SNAPSHOT at one moment. Not a period — a date.Short-term vs long-term capital gainsHold an investment more than one year and the profit is taxed at long-term rates. Sell at a year or less and it is taxed as ordinary income — the…The cash flow statementProfit is an opinion shaped by accounting choices. Cash is a fact. This statement reconciles the two.Compound interestReturns earning returns. The growth is exponential, and human intuition is linear, which is why the result always looks surprising.Cost basis and lot selectionWhat you paid. Your taxable gain is the sale price minus your basis, so basis decides the bill.Depreciation and amortisationSpreading the cost of a long-lived asset across the years it is used, rather than expensing it all at purchase.How dividends are taxedQualified — taxed at the lower long-term capital gains rates. To qualify, the payer must be a US or qualifying foreign corporation AND you must have…Dollar-cost averagingInvesting a fixed amount on a fixed schedule, regardless of price. A payroll deduction into a 401(k) is DCA whether you call it that or not.The emergency fundThree to six months of essential expenses, in cash, somewhere boring and instantly accessible.Expense ratios and fee dragThe annual percentage a fund takes, deducted automatically. You never see a bill, which is exactly why it is ignored.The HSA, quietly the best account there isA Health Savings Account, available if you have a qualifying high-deductible health plan.Reading an income statementPerformance over a PERIOD — a quarter or a year. It starts with revenue and subtracts its way to profit.How options are taxedGains are short-term unless you held the position more than a year, which is rare. In practice most options profit is taxed as ordinary income.Required minimum distributions (RMDs)Once you reach a set age, the IRS requires you to withdraw a minimum amount each year from tax-deferred accounts — Traditional IRAs and most 401(k)s…The Roth IRAA retirement account you fund with money you have ALREADY paid tax on. In exchange, the growth and the withdrawals come out tax-free in retirement.Roth vs Traditional, the actual mathsThat uncertainty is why splitting is common.The rule of 72Divide 72 by an annual return and you get roughly the years needed to double your money.Sequence of returns riskWhen you are withdrawing, the ORDER of returns matters as much as the average. Two retirees with identical average returns can end up in completely…State tax on investmentsFederal is not the whole bill. States tax investment income too, and the spread between the highest and lowest is wide enough to matter on a large…Marginal vs effective ratePeople believe moving into a higher bracket taxes ALL their income at the higher rate, and turn down raises because of it.Tax-loss harvestingDeliberately selling losers to realise the loss, using it to cancel out gains you have already taken.The taxable brokerage accountAn ordinary investment account. No contribution limits, no age rules, no restrictions on what you buy or when you sell.The Traditional IRAThe mirror image of a Roth. You contribute money BEFORE tax (often deductible), it grows untaxed, and you pay ordinary income tax on everything you…The wash sale ruleIf you sell something at a loss and buy the same or a 'substantially identical' security within 30 days, you cannot claim that loss on your taxes.Working capital and the cash cycleA business that collects from customers before paying suppliers is funded by its own suppliers, at no interest. Some of the strongest retailers and…
Averages, bands & statistics 13
The AlligatorThree smoothed moving averages of the bar's midpoint — 13, 8 and 5 periods — each pushed FORWARD by 8, 5 and 3 bars. Bill Williams named them the…The Darvas BoxDraw a rectangle around a consolidation. The top is a high that held for three sessions; the bottom is the low that held underneath it. Buy a break…Fractal Chaos BandsBill Williams' fractals. A bar is an upper fractal if it has two LOWER highs on each side — a local peak confirmed by five bars. Lower fractals are…Guppy Multiple Moving AverageTwelve exponential averages in two groups. Six short (3 to 15 days) in green, six long (30 to 60) in red. Daryl Guppy.High Low BandsA smoothed average of the HIGHS as the upper band and a smoothed average of the LOWS as the lower band. No multiplier, no standard deviation, no ATR…The Moving Average CrossThe 50-day average crossing the 200-day. Up through is the golden cross, down through is the death cross. The most widely reported signal in retail…Moving Average EnvelopesA moving average with lines drawn a fixed PERCENTAGE above and below. The oldest band study there is, predating Bollinger by decades.Median, Typical and Weighted CloseAlmost every indicator you know defaults to the close. The close is one instant — 4:00:00pm — and it is the most distorted price of the day: closing…Prime Number Bands (and why they are on the menu)That prime numbers act as support and resistance. The bands are drawn at prime price levels; the Prime Number Oscillator measures distance to the…Rainbow Moving AverageA 2-period average of price. Then a 2-period average of that. Then of that, ten times over, each drawn in its own colour. Recursive smoothing rather…STARC BandsStoller Average Range Channels. A short 6-period average with bands two ATRs out. Manning Stoller.How to test an indicator yourselfFour rules, and the chart above follows all fourValuation LinesHorizontal lines at the mean of price over the chosen window, with standard-deviation lines above and below. Static — they do not move as price does.
Chart tools you draw 11
The anchor testDraw it. Then move your anchor points by a few bars — an amount nobody would argue with — and draw it again. If the conclusion changes, you did not…Elliott WaveMarkets move in five waves with the trend and three against it, and those waves repeat at every scale — the same shape in a minute chart and a decade…Fibonacci fans and arcsSo a level from an arc depends on your monitor, your zoom and your window size. Two traders at the same desk get different answers from the same tool…Fibonacci retracementAnchor a tool to a swing high and low, and it draws horizontal lines at 23.6%, 38.2%, 50%, 61.8% and 78.6% of that move. The ratios come from the…Fibonacci time zonesThe same sequence applied to TIME rather than price. Anchor it at a pivot and it draws vertical lines 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89 and 144 bars later,…the Gann fanW.D. Gann held that price and time are related by simple ratios, and drew rays at 1×1, 2×1, 1×2 and so on from a pivot. The 1×1 — one unit of price…Gartley and the harmonic patternsFive-point shapes — X, A, B, C, D — where each leg must be a specific Fibonacci ratio of the previous one. The Gartley wants B at 0.618 of XA and D…Andrews' PitchforkPick three pivots — A, B and C. Find the midpoint of B and C. Draw a line from A through that midpoint: the median line. Then draw parallels through…Speed resistance linesEdson Gould's simplification of Gann. Take a move from low to high, divide it into thirds, and draw rays from the start through the one-third and…Tirone levels and quadrant linesTake the highest high and lowest low of a period and cut the range into pieces. Tirone cuts into thirds; quadrant lines cut into quarters. That is…The trendlineThe first thing anyone draws. Two points, a straight line, and a story about support or resistance.
Core technicals & fundamentals 39
The 52-week rangeWhere price sits between its highest and lowest points of the past year — a one-number summary of the stock's current story.ADX (trend strength)A 0-100 gauge of how STRONGLY price is trending — in either direction. It doesn't tell you up or down; it tells you whether there IS a trend.ATR (Average True Range)How much a stock typically moves in a day, in dollars or percent. Its personality. Not direction — just movement size.Beta (market sensitivity)How much a stock moves when the MARKET moves 1%. Beta 2.0 = market drops 10%, expect ~-20%. Beta 0.5 = expect ~-5%.Bollinger BandsA rubber-band around price — the 20-day average plus/minus 2 standard deviations. The band expands when the stock is wild and squeezes when it's calm.Market breadthWhether the AVERAGE stock is participating in a rally, or just a few giants. Chart: equal-weight S&P (every stock counts the same) vs regular…CandlesticksEach candle shows a day's full story — open, close (the body), and the extremes (the wicks). Green = closed up, red = down.Quality of earningsReported profit is an OPINION (full of estimates and assumptions); cash flow is a FACT. This ratio asks: for every dollar of claimed profit, how much…Current ratio (liquidity)Assets convertible to cash within a year ÷ bills due within a year. Can the company pay what it owes SOON?Debt-to-equityHow much the company owes vs what shareholders own. Leverage — the thing that turns bad quarters into bankruptcies.Divergence (the early-warning system)Price and momentum disagreeing. Price makes a NEW high, but RSI/MACD makes a LOWER high — the move is still going but the force behind it is draining.Dividend yieldThe yearly cash payout as a % of the stock price — the part of your return nobody can take back.EMA 9/21 (fast trend)Exponential moving averages — like the 50/200 but for short-term traders. EMAs weight recent days more, so they turn faster.EPS & expected growthStock prices follow EPS revisions more reliably than almost anything else.EV/EBITDAThe "whole business" price tag. EV (enterprise value) = market cap + debt − cash: what you'd really pay to buy the entire company. Divided by its raw…Free cash flow (FCF)The actual CASH left after running and maintaining the business — the money that can pay dividends, buy back stock, or pile up. Earnings are an…Fibonacci retracementsAfter a big move up, pullbacks tend to stop at predictable fractions of that move — 38.2%, 50%, 61.8% — before the trend resumes. The chart marks…GapsPrice jumping past a whole range with zero trading in between — news landed while the market was closed. Arrows mark this stock's 3%+ gaps this year.Gross marginWhat's left of each sales dollar after ONLY the direct cost of the product. The purest read on pricing power — before accountants get creative.Insider ownership & buyingHow much of the company its own executives and directors personally own — and whether they're adding.MACDA momentum tracker built from two moving averages. The MACD line measures short-term vs long-term momentum; the signal line smooths it.Profit marginsHow many cents of every sales dollar survive as profit. Margin = pricing power made visible.Market cap & size classesShare price × share count = the whole company's price tag. Share PRICE alone means nothing — a $5 stock can be a bigger company than a $500 one.Moving averages (50 & 200 day)The average price over the last 50 or 200 days — smoothed lines that show the trend without the daily noise.OBV (on-balance volume)A running tally — add the day's volume when price closes up, subtract when it closes down. It tracks the cumulative FLOW of money.P/B (price-to-book)Price vs the company's net assets on paper — what would theoretically remain if it sold everything and paid all debts.P/E ratio (Price ÷ Earnings)How many dollars you pay for $1 of the company's yearly profit. A P/E of 20 = you pay $20 for each $1 it earns.PEG ratio (P/E ÷ Growth)The P/E ratio adjusted for how fast earnings are growing — the fix for P/E's biggest blind spot.P/S (price-to-sales)Market value ÷ yearly revenue. The valuation tool for companies with no profits yet — revenue exists before earnings do, and it's much harder to fake.Relative strength (vs the market)The stock's performance DIVIDED by the market's. Rising line = beating SPY, falling = losing to it — regardless of whether both are going up.ROE (Return on Equity)How much profit the company squeezes from each dollar shareholders have in it. The quality-of-business meter.ROIC (return on invested capital)Profit generated per dollar of ALL capital in the business — shareholders' AND lenders'. ROE's honest sibling: debt can't inflate it.RSI (Relative Strength Index)A 0–100 speedometer for how hard a stock has been bought or sold over the last 14 days.Short interestThe % of tradable shares currently borrowed and sold by people betting the price FALLS. A live poll of professional pessimism.The volatility squeezeWhen Bollinger Bands (volatility-based) pinch INSIDE Keltner Channels (range-based) — red shading on the chart. It means volatility has compressed to…Stochastic oscillatorWhere today's close sits inside the last 14 days' range. 100 = closing at the very top of the range, 0 = at the very bottom.Support & resistancePrice levels where the stock has repeatedly reversed. Support = a floor where buyers keep stepping in. Resistance = a ceiling where sellers keep…VolumeHow many shares actually traded. Price says what happened; volume says how much conviction was behind it.VWAP (volume-weighted average price)The average price where shares ACTUALLY changed hands — big-volume days count more. The market's real cost basis.
Momentum & oscillators 20
Awesome OscillatorThe 5-period average of the bar's MIDPOINT minus the 34-period average of the same. Bill Williams. Plotted as a histogram coloured by whether it rose…Balance of Power(close − open) divided by (high − low). One number per day, from -1 to +1, answering: of all the ground price covered today, how much of it did the…Commodity Channel IndexHow far the typical price (high+low+close over 3) has strayed from its 20-day average, measured in units of its own average deviation. Donald…Chande Momentum OscillatorTotal up-moves minus total down-moves over 14 days, divided by the sum of both, times 100. Tushar Chande, 1994. Runs -100 to +100.The Coppock CurveA weighted average of two long rate-of-change readings, on MONTHLY data. Edwin Coppock published it in Barron's in 1962. It fires perhaps once every…Disparity IndexHow far price is from its own moving average, as a percent. Originating in Japanese technical analysis, where it is called kairi.Detrended Price OscillatorPrice minus its own moving average, with the price series shifted back by half the lookback plus one. The shift is the whole trick — it aligns the…Ease of MovementHow far price moved, divided by how much volume it took to move it. Richard Arms — the same person behind the Arms Index and equivolume charts. High…Ehlers Fisher TransformJohn Ehlers, an engineer who came to markets from signal processing. It squeezes price into a -1..+1 range and then applies the Fisher transform, 0.5…Know Sure ThingFour rate-of-change readings — 10, 15, 20 and 30 periods — each smoothed, then added up with weights of 1, 2, 3 and 4. Martin Pring. The name is a…Bollinger %bWhere price sits between the Bollinger bands as a single number. 1.0 is exactly on the upper band, 0.0 on the lower, 0.5 on the middle. Above 1 or…Percentage Price OscillatorMACD divided by the slow moving average, expressed as a percent. Identical shape, different units.Relative Vigor IndexBalance of Power's idea, smoothed and turned into a proper oscillator. Average of (close − open) divided by average of (high − low), over 10 periods,…Rate of Change and MomentumThe two simplest indicators that exist, and the ancestors of most of this category.Schaff Trend CycleMACD, run through the Stochastic formula twice. Doug Schaff, 1999. The result is bounded 0–100 and turns considerably earlier than the MACD it is…Stochastic RSIThe Stochastic formula applied to RSI instead of to price. It asks where does today's RSI sit inside its own 14-day range? — an indicator of an…TRIXTake an exponential average of price. Take an exponential average of THAT. Then a third. Now plot the daily rate of change of the result. Jack…True Strength IndexDouble-smoothed momentum, divided by double-smoothed ABSOLUTE momentum, times 100. William Blau, 1991. Runs roughly -100 to +100.Ultimate OscillatorLarry Williams, 1976, built to fix a problem he had with every oscillator including his own — the lookback you choose decides the answer you get. A…Williams %RWhere today's close sits inside the last 14 days' high-to-low range, on a scale from 0 (right at the high) to -100 (right at the low). Larry…
Studies: volume, volatility, trend 20
Anchored VWAPOrdinary VWAP resets every session, which makes it a day-trader's tool. Anchored VWAP starts the calculation at a date YOU pick and never resets — so…AroonThe only indicator here that measures TIME rather than price. Aroon Up asks how many days since the 25-day high? — 100 means today, 0 means 25 days…Bollinger BandwidthThe distance between the Bollinger bands, divided by the middle band, as a percent. The squeeze — but as a NUMBER instead of a shape you have to…Choppiness IndexIt compares the total ground price covered over 14 days against the net distance from the 14-day high to low. If price travelled a long way but ended…Chaikin Money FlowIt ignores where a stock opened and asks one question per day — where in its range did it CLOSE? Closing at the high scores +1, at the low -1,…CorrelationWhether two things move together. +1 is lockstep, 0 is unrelated, -1 is exact opposites. Measured on daily RETURNS, not on prices — two stocks that…Donchian ChannelsThe highest high and lowest low of the last N days. That is the entire formula. No averaging, no smoothing, no parameters beyond N.Historical VolatilityThe standard deviation of daily returns, annualised. HV 20% means that if the last month repeated forever, a one-standard-deviation year is ±20%. It…Ichimoku CloudFive lines that together try to replace a whole indicator panel. Developed by a Japanese journalist over 30 years and published in 1969. The name…Indicator overloadA broker's study library has roughly 120 entries. The top of the chart shows six from the momentum category — MACD histogram, Rate of Change,…Keltner ChannelA moving average with bands set at a multiple of ATR — average true RANGE — above and below.Linear Regression: slope and R²The straight line of best fit through price. Your study library splits it into four separate entries — Slope, Intercept, R², Forecast — but they are…Money Flow IndexRSI with volume bolted on. Same 0–100 scale, same oversold/overbought idea, but each day's move is weighted by how much stock traded. Often called…Parabolic SARSAR stands for stop and reverse. A dot trails the price on one side; when price touches it, the dot jumps to the other side and the system flips.…Pivot PointsYesterday's high, low and close averaged into a single pivot (P), then support and resistance levels derived by simple arithmetic around it.…Standard deviation and the z-scoreThe average distance of price from its own mean. Turn it into a z-score — how many standard deviations price sits from its 50-day average — and you…SupertrendOne line that sits below price in an uptrend and above it in a downtrend, placed a multiple of ATR away from the midpoint of the bar. When price…The Ulcer IndexThe root-mean-square of how far below its own high water mark a stock has been. Named for what it measures — how much it hurt to hold.Volume OscillatorShort-term average volume minus longer-term average volume, as a percentage. It answers is today busy for THIS stock — not busy compared to some…Volume ProfileEvery other volume study plots volume against TIME. This one plots it against PRICE — how much stock actually changed hands at each level over the…
Volatility & trend regime 12
Chaikin VolatilitySmooth the daily high−low range over 10 days, then measure how much that smoothed range has changed over the last 10 days. Not the level of…Donchian WidthThe distance between the 20-day high and the 20-day low, as a percentage of price. The Donchian channel expressed as one number instead of two lines.Elder Impulse SystemEach bar gets one of three colours, from two conditions — is the 13-day EMA rising, and is the MACD histogram rising?'Go / No Go' trend consensusA composite that takes several ordinary indicators, counts how many agree, and paints the chart a colour. Strong green means everything agrees the…Gopalakrishnan Range IndexThe logarithm of the 21-day high-low range, divided by the logarithm of 21. Jayanthi Gopalakrishnan, an editor at Technical Analysis of Stocks &…Mass IndexDonald Dorsey. Take a 9-day average of the daily range, then a 9-day average of THAT, and divide the first by the second. Sum 25 of those ratios.…Performance IndexPrice as a percentage change from a chosen starting point. Rebase everything to zero on the same day and plot them together. The simplest study in…Psychological LineThe percentage of the last 12 days that closed up. That is the entire calculation — count the green days, divide by twelve. Popular in Japanese and…Random Walk IndexThe one indicator on the whole menu that states its null hypothesis. Michael Poulos, 1991.Relative Volatility IndexRSI, with standard deviation substituted for price change. Donald Dorsey, 1993. Instead of asking how much did price rise versus fall, it asks was…Accumulative Swing IndexWelles Wilder's attempt to build a 'real' price line. The Swing Index scores each day using the open, high, low, close AND the previous day's open…True RangeBecause a stock that closes at $100 and opens at $88 has moved $12, and high−low says it moved whatever it did after the open. The gap is the part of…
Volume & money flow 10
The Accumulation/Distribution LineA running total. Each day, score where the close landed in the day's range (+1 at the high, -1 at the low), multiply by that day's volume, add to the…Elder's Force IndexPrice change times volume. Alexander Elder. Deliberately the simplest formula in this category — and it combines the three things Elder argued…Klinger Volume OscillatorThe most complicated formula in the volume category. Stephen Klinger's attempt to build one indicator that reads both the short-term flow and the…Market Facilitation IndexThe day's range divided by the day's volume — how much price movement each share of volume bought. Bill Williams. Not to be confused with the Money…Negative and Positive Volume IndexSplit every day into two piles. NVI compounds the return ONLY on days when volume fell from the day before. PVI compounds only the days volume rose.…Price Volume TrendOBV with one change — instead of adding the whole day's volume, it adds volume times the PERCENTAGE the stock moved. A day that rose 4% contributes…Relative VolumeToday's volume divided by what this stock normally trades. RVOL 1.0 is an ordinary day. RVOL 3.0 means three times the usual crowd showed up. This is…Trade Volume IndexAnother running volume total, with one idea the others do not have — a dead zone. Price must move more than a set threshold before the day counts at…Twiggs Money FlowColin Twiggs' repair of Chaikin Money Flow. Same question — where did the close land in the range, weighted by volume — with two specific fixes.Volume Rate of ChangeToday's volume against volume N days ago, as a percent. +100 means volume has doubled.
Desk output 9
Detail BtcProduced by one of the desk scanners rather than by a lesson, so there is no write-up to link to.Detail EthProduced by one of the desk scanners rather than by a lesson, so there is no write-up to link to.Detail HypeProduced by one of the desk scanners rather than by a lesson, so there is no write-up to link to.Detail PepeProduced by one of the desk scanners rather than by a lesson, so there is no write-up to link to.Detail SolProduced by one of the desk scanners rather than by a lesson, so there is no write-up to link to.Detail ZecProduced by one of the desk scanners rather than by a lesson, so there is no write-up to link to.DominanceProduced by one of the desk scanners rather than by a lesson, so there is no write-up to link to.LiquidityProduced by one of the desk scanners rather than by a lesson, so there is no write-up to link to.PerformanceProduced by one of the desk scanners rather than by a lesson, so there is no write-up to link to.
9 of these come from the desk scanners rather than from a lesson, so they have no write-up behind them.