Stock Charts for Dummies will teach you how to build a visually appealing chart and add tools based on the type of trading or investing decision you’re trying to make. It will also introduce you to the pros, cons, and best practices of using three key types of charts: Candlesticks, Bar Charts, and Line Charts. This book reveals the important stories charts tell, and how different parameters can impact what you see on the screen. This book will explain some of the most powerful display settings that help traders understand the information in a chart to find outperformance as its beginning.
Introduction:
So you’ve familiarized yourself with the world of investing and you’re ready to dive in, or perhaps you’re already in the market but looking for more tools to improve your stock picking and portfolio management. Great! Charting gives you a way to visualize trends in the market. You can help improve your visualization with various tools that we show you how to use in this book, such as overlays and indicators. You also get to explore many different chart types, including candlestick charts, bar charts, line charts, and area charts, as well as discover the pros and cons of each chart type.
Beyond the basics, we introduce you to various strategies you can use to organize and manage your charts to make your stock trading easier and more successful. Yes, you’ll still risk taking a loss when trading stocks, but with these tools we can help you minimize losses if one of your stocks takes an unexpected dive.
First we introduce you to the basics of getting started in the world of stock charting. Then we take you on a tour of the most common charts that are used by traders. After you understand how to build these charts, we focus on chart settings and how the various options can impact your trading decision making. Finally we discuss how you can organize and manage your charts to trade more effectively and efficiently. When you feel comfortable with stock charting, it’s time to develop your own style. We show you how to put all you’ve learned into building a trading style using charts to improve your stock trading decision making.
You don’t have to read this book from cover to cover (but we won’t mind if you do!); simply find the topic you’re interested in, read up on it, and put away the book until you need it again. And you can skip anything that’s marked with the Technical Stuff icon or included in a shaded box called a sidebar; such information is interesting but not crucial to understanding a given topic.
Within this book, you may note that some web addresses break across two lines of text. If you’re reading this book in print and want to visit one of these web pages, simply key in the web address exactly as it’s noted in the text, pretending as though the line break doesn’t exist. If you’re reading this as an ebook, you’ve got it easy — just click the web address to be taken directly to the web page.
Contents:
- Brushing Up on Stock Charting Basics
- Using Charts to Minimize Your Emotional Roller Coaster
- Focusing on Chart Settings
- Burning the Candle at Both Ends with Candlestick Charts
- Spotting Differences with Bar Charts
- Seeing What’s Trending with Line Charts
- Getting the Lay of the Land with Area Charts
- Charting Different Time Periods
- Reading a Price Chart
- Harnessing the Power of Overlays
- Using Indicators to Facilitate Chart Analysis
- Making Sense of Relative Strength Indicators
- Organizing Charts into Industry or Sector Groups
- Keeping Track of What’s Going On
- Conducting Breadth Analysis
- A Quick Check of the Week’s Action
- Customizing Candlestick Charts
- Fine-Tuning Your Bar Charts
- Adjusting Your Line and Area Charts
- Using Your Charts to Inform Your Buy, Hold, and Sell Decisions
Stock Charts For Dummies By Greg Schnell and Lita Epstein pdf