You Only Need These 4 Things to Start Reading Charts

Instead of reading news or project fundamentals, technical analysis looks at the traces left behind on a price chart — price and volume — to predict what might happen next.

Prices where lots of people bought or sold tend to leave repeatable patterns, and reading those patterns helps you time your entries and exits. It's not a crystal ball, but it does tilt the odds in your favor.

Support is a price level where the price has bounced up multiple times; resistance is where it's been pushed back down multiple times.

These levels keep mattering because a lot of traders share the same mental price points — 'buy here,' 'sell here.'

A moving average smooths recent prices into a single line. As a rule of thumb, price above the MA suggests an uptrend, price below suggests a downtrend.

When a short-term MA crosses above a longer-term MA, it's called a "golden cross" (bullish signal); crossing below is a "death cross" (bearish signal).

RSI (Relative Strength Index) is a 0–100 number that tells you whether price has moved "too far, too fast."

Above 70 is typically considered overbought (a pullback may be due), below 30 is oversold (a bounce may be due). RSI alone isn't reliable — combine it with support/resistance or trend for a much stronger signal.

① Don't fight the trend — shorting in a bull market or longing in a bear market is a low-probability bet.

② Decide your stop-loss before you enter — deciding how much you're willing to lose first, then calculating leverage from there, is what actually prevents liquidation.

③ Don't go all-in at once — scaling in makes managing your average entry price much easier.

④ Stack multiple signals — support/resistance, moving averages, and RSI agreeing at once is the strongest kind of signal.

⑤ Stick to your plan — once your stop-loss and target are set, don't cancel them emotionally; discipline wins over the long run.

Technical analysis helps you decide where to enter and where to exit — but 'how much to bet' is a separate question entirely.

Once you've picked a direction, it's time to calculate the exact leverage and position size that match your risk tolerance.