Support and Resistance
Support and resistance is one of the most widely used concepts in trading. Strangely enough, everyone seems to have their own idea on how you should measure support and resistance.
This zigzag pattern is making its way up (bull market). When the market moves up and then pulls back, the highest point reached before it pulled back is now resistance.
As the market continues up again, the lowest point reached before it started back is now support. In this way resistance and support are continually formed as the market oscillates over time. The reverse is true for the downtrend.
Plotting Support and Resistance
One thing to remember is that support and resistance levels are not exact numbers.
Often times you will see a support or resistance level that appears broken, but soon after find out that the market was just testing it. With candlestick charts, these "tests" of support and resistance are usually represented by the candlestick shadows.
Support holding at 4725
How the shadows of the candles tested the 4725 support level. At those times it seemed like the market was "breaking" support. In hindsight we can see that the market was merely testing that level.
So how do we truly know if support and resistance was broken?
There is no definite answer to this question. Some argue that a support or resistance level is broken if the market can actually close past that level. However, you will find that this is not always the case.
Example:The price actually closed past the 4725 support level.
In this case, price had closed below the 4725 support level but ended up rising back up above it.If you had believed that this was a real breakout and sold this pair, you would've been seriously hurtin'!
Looking at the chart now, you can visually see and come to the conclusion that the support was not actually broken; it is still very much intact and now even stronger.To help you filter out these false breakouts, you should think of support and resistance more of as "zones" rather than concrete numbers.
One way to help you find these zones is to plot support and resistance on a line chart rather than a candlestick chart. The reason is that line charts only show you the closing price while candlesticks add the extreme highs and lows to the picture.
Support and resistance is one of the most widely used concepts in trading. Strangely enough, everyone seems to have their own idea on how you should measure support and resistance.
This zigzag pattern is making its way up (bull market). When the market moves up and then pulls back, the highest point reached before it pulled back is now resistance.
As the market continues up again, the lowest point reached before it started back is now support. In this way resistance and support are continually formed as the market oscillates over time. The reverse is true for the downtrend.
Plotting Support and Resistance
One thing to remember is that support and resistance levels are not exact numbers.
Often times you will see a support or resistance level that appears broken, but soon after find out that the market was just testing it. With candlestick charts, these "tests" of support and resistance are usually represented by the candlestick shadows.
Support holding at 4725
How the shadows of the candles tested the 4725 support level. At those times it seemed like the market was "breaking" support. In hindsight we can see that the market was merely testing that level.
There is no definite answer to this question. Some argue that a support or resistance level is broken if the market can actually close past that level. However, you will find that this is not always the case.
Example:The price actually closed past the 4725 support level.
In this case, price had closed below the 4725 support level but ended up rising back up above it.If you had believed that this was a real breakout and sold this pair, you would've been seriously hurtin'!
Looking at the chart now, you can visually see and come to the conclusion that the support was not actually broken; it is still very much intact and now even stronger.To help you filter out these false breakouts, you should think of support and resistance more of as "zones" rather than concrete numbers.
One way to help you find these zones is to plot support and resistance on a line chart rather than a candlestick chart. The reason is that line charts only show you the closing price while candlesticks add the extreme highs and lows to the picture.