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Price Action
Learn how to read price movement with clarity and turn chart observations into repeatable decisions.
This hub organizes our best price action guides, from key levels and trend reading to breakouts, pullbacks, and execution. Use it to build a clean, practical approach you can apply across markets and timeframes.
On this page:
What is price action?
Core price action guides
Candlestick pattern guides
Common price action setups
Free price action mini course
Price action FAQ
What is price action?
Price action is the practice of reading a chart by focusing on how price behaves: how it trends, pauses, accelerates, and reacts at important areas.
You learn to spot meaningful moves, recognize when a market is pausing or breaking out, and understand where buyers or sellers are likely to defend key areas. From there, you build a simple plan: what needs to happen before you enter, where your idea becomes invalid, and what a realistic target looks like.
The biggest advantage of price action is that it keeps you focused on execution. It helps you avoid overthinking, trade with clearer rules, and evaluate setups in a consistent way.
The chart is feedback. Price action teaches you to read that feedback and act only when it’s clear.
Explore core price action guides
Supply and demand trading
Spotting supply and demand zones on your charts can be a helpful trading tool. Similar to support and resistance levels, these zones highlight areas on the chart where the price is likely to bounce or reverse. Traders use these zones to pinpoint areas where they might buy or sell. In other words, supply and demand zones act as a first filter, helping you identify potentially profitable price levels...
Trendline trading
By drawing trendlines on price charts, you can identify long-term trends and potentially profit from them. This guide will walk you through everything you need to know about trendline trading, from the basics of drawing trendlines to using them to enter and exit trades. Along the way, we'll also explore some common pitfalls to avoid and how to...
Support and resistance
Support and resistance trading is very powerful and knowing how to draw support and resistance levels on your price charts is a key skill for any trader. However, we often see that traders make many mistakes when it comes to finding the best levels. In this article, we help you understand how to find the best support and resistance levels...
Breakout trading
Breakouts are the triggers of new trends and theconnectors between different trends. And that’s really, really important to understand between a downtrend as we’ve seen here. And an uptrend, usually you will see a range market and the range markets can have many different forms as we will see during the phase of this video...
5 pullback strategies
Learning how to trade pullbacks can be a great skill as a trader. Pullbacks happen all the time and if you learn how to trade pullbacks, you can enhance your repertoire and find many more high probability trading scenarios. Pullbacks come in many different forms and in this article, I explain the five most common ones. You will also learn different pullback entry techniques...
Explore candlestick pattern guides
Engulfing candlestick pattern
An engulfing candlestick pattern is a powerful signal of momentum reversal in technical analysis, and identifying one is quite simple. This pattern occurs when the body of the current candlestick fully engulfs the body of the previous one, signaling a potential shift in market sentiment. In a bullish engulfing pattern (BE+), the price action forms a large bullish candle where both the high is higher, and...
Evening star candlestick
The Evening Star pattern is a powerful bearish reversal pattern that signals a potential change in market direction from an uptrend to a downtrend. This classic candlestick formation is widely used by traders to predict trend reversals, especially after a sustained price rally on a higher timeframe...
Pinbar candlestick
One of the most powerful and frequently observed patterns is the pinbar candlestick. In this guide, we'll dive into what a pinbar candlestick is, how to identify it, and, most importantly, how to trade it effectively. To fully understand the power of the pinbar, it’s essential to dissect its structure. A typical pinbar has three main components:
10 most profitable candlesticks
There are roughly ten that have statistically significant levels of accuracy–from 84% to 57%. We also give credit to the research that Thomas Bulkowski has done in this field and from whom we derive much of what we’re about to present. So let’s get to it–the 10 top-performing profitable candlestick signals...
The Inside bar candlestick
Inside bars are among the most popular candlestick patterns price action traders use in their analysis and trading. Defined as (usually) a smaller ranged bar that is totally engulfed by the bar prior to it – these are great to identify halts in momentum that can serve as a crucial cue when looking for trade setups...
Explore more price action guides
8 price action secrets
Price action is among the most popular trading concepts. A trader who knows how to use price action the right way can often improve his performance and his way of looking at charts significantly. However, there are still a lot of misunderstandings and half-truths circulating that confuse traders and set them up for failure. In this article, we explore the 8 most important price action secrets and share the best price action trading tips...
Master candlestick patterns
Candlestick charts are further developed line charts – which the image below shows – that serve to compensate for the disadvantage of less information. Candlestick charts have their origin in 17thcentury Japan. Today, candlestick charts are the preferred tool of analysis for traders and most investors since they provide all the required information at a glance. In this article, you will learn everything you need to master candlesticks patterns like a true professional...
8 candlestick strategies
Since Japanese rice traders developed the Candlestick by incorporating open, high, low and closing prices, traders have identified a number of patterns that offer high probability trading opportunities. Candlestick patterns come in different sizes and shapes. There are single period candlestick patterns like the pin bars, but also, you can find patterns that involve more than two bars, like the Three White Soldiers. However, not all patterns offer the best win rate in Forex. We have identified eight major candlestick patterns that actually work in Forex...
5 tips for reading price action
Being able to read a price action chart is important to make the right decisions. The problem many traders have is that they overcomplicate things and get easily confused – or they don’t have a process in the first place and don’t know what they are looking for. In this article, I want to explain 5 different concepts of price and technical analysis that will help you make sense of charts and understand the price dynamics in a more effective way...
Exhaustion and rejection
I just love trading transition points where a Forex pair goes from uptrend to downtrend or from downtrend to uptrend. Those transition points are super hard to trade and very very challenging, but, at the same time, once you understand how to read them, you can take your trading to the next level and understand almost any price chart. Two very important principles in this trading context are “exhaustion” and “rejection” and those price action concepts can...
More chart pattern resources
Trend Continuation Patterns
Learn to read the chart with clarity and trade with rules.
Trend Continuation Patterns
Learn to read the chart with clarity and trade with rules.
Trend Reversal Patterns
Learn to read the chart with clarity and trade with rules.
How to trade price action
Step 1: Market Phase
Goal: Identify whether the market is trending, ranging, or transitioning.
What to do: Mark the most recent swing highs/lows and ask: is price making progress or stalling?
Why it matters: It tells you whether to focus on pullbacks, range edges, or breakouts.
Step 2: Define Levels
Goal: Find the key price areas that actually matter.
What to do: Draw major levels/zones where price previously reversed, stalled, or accelerated.
Why it matters: Good price action trades start from clear levels, not the middle of nowhere.
Step 3: Be Selective
Goal: Trade fewer things, better. Pick one of these “core” price action setups:
- Pullback continuation (trend resumes)
- Break & retest (new level holds)
- Rejection at level (failure to push through)
Why it matters: Consistency comes from repeating one setup, not collecting ten.
Step 4: Candlestick Trigger
Goal: Time the entry with a repeatable approach and confidence.
Look for: objectively clear candle patterns, strong closes, or a clean retest reaction, something that shows commitment.
Why it matters: If you are not 100% certain about a setup, it’s not clear enough.
Step 5: Execution and Management
Goal: Trade like it’s pre-planned, not improvised.
Define: entry trigger → stop logic → first target → what you’ll do if price stalls.
Rule: If you don’t know your next action for both outcomes, you don’t have a setup yet.
Our price action mini course
If you want a structured introduction to price action, start with our free Price Action Trading Course on YouTube.
In about an hour, you’ll learn how to read charts with clarity. From candlestick behavior and price patterns, to trend analysis and practical trade execution.
It’s a practical walkthrough you can apply across markets and timeframes.
In this course you’ll learn:
How to read candlesticks and use comment candle triggers.
How to identify trends and understand market structure.
How to spot breakouts and pullbacks.
How to combine price action into simple strategies.
Tradeciety's trading resources
Price Action
Read price clearly with candlesticks, key levels, and practical entry triggers.
Top guides: Supply and demand trading · Trendline trading guide
Chart Patterns
Learn continuation and reversal patterns, breakout rules, and how to spot fakeouts early.
Top guides: Cup and Handle · Triangle pattern guide
Market Structure
Understand trends and ranges using swing structure, breaks, and regime shifts.
Top guides: Elliot wave analysis
Trading Indicators
Use indicators such as moving averages, RSI, volatility tools, and simple filters.
Top guides: Moving Averages · Bollinger Bands
Risk Management
Build consistent risk rules with position sizing, stop placement, and reward-to-risk planning.
Top guides: Reward to risk ratio · Position sizing
Trading Psychology
Improve execution by fixing common mistakes, managing emotions, and building discipline.
Top guides: Why 95% of traders fail
Trading Strategies
Explore proven strategy types—breakouts, pullbacks, trend following, and mean reversion.
Top guides: 3 trendline strategies · Day trading strategies
Trading Process & Improvement
Develop consistency with journaling, reviews, metrics, and a repeatable trading routine.
Top guides: Best trading journal · Backtesting guide
Price action questions traders ask most
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What is price action trading?
Price action trading is a way of analyzing markets by focusing on how price moves on the chart by dissecting trends, swings, consolidations, and reactions at important areas.
Traders use price action to build a trade idea with clear rules for when to enter, when to step aside, and how to manage risk. It’s a practical approach because it turns chart movement into repeatable decisions.
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Does price action trading work?
Yes, price action can work when it’s traded with consistent rules and disciplined risk control. The edge comes from selecting high-quality situations and executing them the same way over and over, not from predicting every move.
Many profitable traders use price action because it stays close to what the market is actually doing.
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Is price action better for beginners or advanced traders?
Both. Beginners benefit because price action builds strong chart-reading habits and prevents overcomplication, while advanced traders use it to fine-tune execution and trade management.
The key is to start with a small set of setups and keep your decision process simple.
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What timeframe is best for price action trading?
The best timeframe is the one that fits your schedule and allows you to trade without rushing decisions. Higher timeframes often provide cleaner structure and fewer “noise” moves, while lower timeframes offer more setups but demand faster execution and tighter discipline.
Many traders combine timeframes by planning on a higher one and executing on a lower one.
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Does price action work in stocks, forex, and crypto?
Yes, price action principles apply across markets because they reflect buying and selling pressure. What changes is volatility and behavior.
Adjusting position sizing and expectations to the market’s volatility is what keeps the approach consistent.
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What are the most important price action concepts to learn first?
Start with the basics that show up everywhere: trend vs range behavior, swing highs/lows, and key support/resistance areas.
Then learn a small set of repeatable entry situations like break-and-retest and pullback continuation. Mastery comes from depth, not quantity.
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How do you find key levels for price action trading?
Key levels usually come from areas where price previously reversed, stalled, or broke strongly, such as prior swing highs/lows and range boundaries.
The best levels tend to be obvious on the chart and respected multiple times. Focus on a few meaningful levels instead of drawing dozens.
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How do you trade support and resistance with price action?
Support and resistance trading is about watching how price behaves as it approaches a key area, whether it rejects, breaks, or consolidates. Support and resistance levels from higher timeframes carry the most weight.
Traders typically wait for clear confirmation (rejection or breakout behavior) before committing. Clean rules and patience usually outperform “guessing” at the first touch.
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What is a break and retest in price action trading?
A break and retest happens when price breaks through a level, then returns to test it again before continuing. Traders like this setup because it often offers a clearer decision point than chasing the initial breakout. The retest helps reveal whether the level is being accepted or rejected.
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How do you trade pullbacks with price action?
Pullback trading focuses on joining an existing move after a temporary retracement rather than chasing the impulse. Traders often look for pullbacks into prior decision areas and then wait for price to show that the move is resuming. The goal is to enter when the market is offering a better location and clearer structure.
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What are the best candlestick patterns for price action trading?
The most useful candlestick patterns are the ones that clearly show rejection or momentum, such as pin bars (rejection candles), engulfing candles, and inside bars. Their value increases when they appear at meaningful areas and align with the direction of the move you’re trading. Think of candlesticks as timing tools, not standalone strategies.
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How do you avoid fakeouts and false breakouts in price action?
Fakeouts are reduced by being selective: avoid crowded areas, avoid late entries, and prefer breakouts that hold or retest cleanly. Many traders wait for acceptance beyond a level or a retest instead of buying/selling the first spike. A small, consistent risk per trade keeps inevitable fakeouts from doing real damage.
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What are the most common price action trading mistakes?
Common mistakes include forcing trades in messy conditions, entering too late after a move already happened, and changing rules after a few losses. Another frequent issue is inconsistency which means switching setups and timeframes too often to build reliable skill. Price action rewards a small playbook, repeated execution, and review.

