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Not investment advice. Educational reading. See Disclaimer.
L.9 · BEGINNER · 2 MIN

Reading a Stock Chart

Stock charts show price and volume over time. Learning to read them helps you understand what has happened, even if they cannot reliably predict the future.

Quiz · 5 questions ↓
§ 01
ElementWhat It Shows
Price lineClosing price each day, connected as a line
CandlestickOpen, high, low, close for each period
Volume barsNumber of shares traded (tall bars = high activity)
Moving averageSmoothed price trend (e.g., 50-day average)
§ 02
Open any ticker chart. Switch between **1M, 1Y, and 5Y** periods. Watch how the story changes at different time scales.
§ 03
A stock has ranged between $50-52 for 6 weeks. Tuesday it breaks above $52 on 3x average volume. Wednesday-Thursday it pulls back to $51.50 on low volume. Most disciplined read?
§ 04

Volume confirms price moves. A price rise on high volume is more meaningful than the same rise on low volume.

Five questions · AI feedback

Sit with the ideas.

A stock rises 8% on 5x its average daily volume. The next day it rises 2% on normal volume. What does this pattern suggest?

Why:

Other lessons in this course.

  1. 01What Is a Stock?
  2. 02How Stock Exchanges Work
  3. 03Sectors: How the Stock Market Is Organized
  4. 04Market Cap: Small, Mid, and Large
  5. 05Dilution: When Your Slice of the Company Shrinks
  6. 06What Moves Stock Prices?
  7. 07Dividends: Getting Paid to Own Stocks
  8. 08Bulls, Bears, and Market Cycles
  9. 09Reading a Stock Chart— reading now
See it on a real ticker →