Chart Analysis:

What Are Charts?
A price chart is a sequence of prices plotted over a specific timeframe. In statistical terms, charts are referred to as time series plots, usually containing the open, high, low, and closing prices.

Chart Patterns:
Much of our understanding of chart patterns can be attributed to the work of Richard Schabacker. His 1932 classic, Technical Analysis and Stock Market Profits, laid the foundations for modern pattern analysis. In Technical Analysis of Stock Trends (1948), Edwards and Magee credit Schabacker for most of the concepts put forth in the first part of their book. We would also like to acknowledge Messrs. Schabacker, Edwards and Magee, and John Murphy as the driving forces behind our understanding of chart patterns.

Pattern analysis may seem straightforward, but it is by no means an easy task. Schabacker states: §The science of chart reading, however, is not as easy as the mere memorizing of certain patterns and pictures and recalling what they generally forecast. Any general chart is a combination of countless different patterns, some being continuation patterns and some reversal patterns, and its accurate analysis depends upon constant study, long experience and knowledge of all the fine points, both technical and fundamental, and, above all, the ability to weigh opposing indications against each other, to appraise the entire picture in the light of its most minute and composite details as well as in the recognition of any certain and memorized formula.

To name just a few there are; Double tops and bottoms, Head and Shoulder tops and bottoms, Wedges, Flags, Triangles, Channels, Gaps (four types), Key Reversals, Island reversals, and more. There are also Candlestick charts which provide a different way of looking at, and analyzing, the same basic price data, open, high, low, and close.

A few other tools used on charts are Trend Lines, Support and Resistance areas, percentage retracements, Fibonacci retracements, Time cycles, Elliot Wave Theory Analysis, Gann Analysis, and more. Technical Indicator Analysis:

There are many ways to crunch the numbers and endless combinations.

Here is a list of some of the more popular Technical Indicators:

Accumulation Distribution
Advance-Decline lines and ratios
Arms Index (TRIN)
Bollinger Bands
Commodity Channel Index
Moving Averages (of various types)
Moving Average Convergence Divergence
McClellan Osc
Momentum
On Balance Volume
Parabolic SAR
Relative Strength Index (RSI)
Stochastic (fast and slow)
Volatility