Technical Analysis Basics for Crypto
A plain-language introduction to reading price charts and common technical analysis concepts.
What to remember
- Technical analysis studies price/volume history to look for patterns.
- Support, resistance, trend, and volume are common core concepts.
- It's distinct from fundamental analysis, which studies a project's underlying substance.
- No technical pattern guarantees future price behavior.
What technical analysis is
Technical analysis studies historical price and volume data, generally through charts, in an attempt to identify patterns that might inform trading decisions. It's a distinct approach from fundamental analysis, which instead studies a project's underlying technology, adoption, and economics.
Common concepts
- Support and resistance: price levels where an asset has historically tended to stop falling (support) or stop rising (resistance).
- Trend: the general direction price has been moving over a given period — up, down, or sideways.
- Volume: the amount traded over a period, often used alongside price to gauge the strength of a move.
- Moving averages: a smoothed line showing the average price over a set period, used to help visualize trend direction.
Patterns describe the past — they don't guarantee the future
Technical analysis is a framework for interpreting historical data, not a predictive formula. Widely-known patterns can also become less reliable once many traders act on the same signal at the same time.
What to remember
- Technical analysis studies price/volume history to look for patterns.
- Support, resistance, trend, and volume are common core concepts.
- It's distinct from fundamental analysis, which studies a project's underlying substance.
- No technical pattern guarantees future price behavior.
Part of these learning paths
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Simple Moving Average (SMA)
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Exponential Moving Average (EMA)
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Relative Strength Index (RSI)
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MACD (Moving Average Convergence Divergence)
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Bollinger Bands
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Average True Range (ATR)
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Average Directional Index (ADX)
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Volume-Weighted Average Price (VWAP)
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Weighted Moving Average (WMA)
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Hull Moving Average (HMA)
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DEMA and TEMA (Double and Triple Exponential Moving Average)
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Volume-Weighted Moving Average (VWMA)
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Smoothed Moving Average (SMMA / RMA)
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Arnaud Legoux Moving Average (ALMA)
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Kaufman's Adaptive Moving Average (KAMA)
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McGinley Dynamic
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Moving Average Envelopes
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Supertrend Indicator
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Parabolic SAR
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Aroon and Aroon Oscillator
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Vortex Indicator
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Ichimoku Cloud
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TRIX Indicator
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Mass Index
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Coppock Curve
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Schaff Trend Cycle
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Know Sure Thing (KST)
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Detrended Price Oscillator (DPO)
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Stochastic Oscillator and Stochastic RSI
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Williams %R
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Commodity Channel Index (CCI)
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Rate of Change (ROC) and Momentum
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Ultimate Oscillator
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Awesome Oscillator
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True Strength Index (TSI)
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Relative Vigor Index (RVI)
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Fisher Transform
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Chande Momentum Oscillator (CMO)
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Elder Ray Index (Bull Power and Bear Power)
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Keltner Channels
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Donchian Channels
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Standard Deviation (as a Volatility Indicator)
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Historical Volatility
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Chaikin Volatility
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Ulcer Index
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On-Balance Volume (OBV)
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Money Flow Index (MFI)
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Chaikin Money Flow (CMF)
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Accumulation/Distribution Line
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Chaikin Oscillator
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Force Index
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Ease of Movement (EMV)
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Volume Price Trend (VPT)
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Negative Volume Index and Positive Volume Index (NVI and PVI)
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Volume Profile
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Pivot Points
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Fibonacci Retracement and Extension
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Andrews' Pitchfork
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Gann Fan
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Linear Regression and Linear Regression Channel
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Zig Zag Indicator
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Fractals and Swing High/Low
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Market Breadth Indicators: An Overview
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McClellan Oscillator and Summation Index
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TRIN (Arms Index)
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High-Low Index
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Understanding Overbought and Oversold Conditions
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Understanding Indicator Divergence
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Leading vs. Lagging Indicators
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Why Technical Indicators Lag: Trend-Following vs. Mean-Reversion Tools
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How to Read a Candlestick Chart
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How to Build a Technical Analysis Workflow
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