Chart School / Recognizing Patterns
Support and resistance
Lesson 5 of 14 · about 1 min read, plus practice · Glossary
Support and resistance are areas where price previously paused or reversed, often called floors and ceilings. Treat them as approximate zones, not physical barriers. Identify the prior trend and more than one relevant observation. Proposed confirmation might be a later close outside the zone, using a rule chosen before seeing the outcome. A retest can provide context but is not mandatory or reliable. News, thin liquidity and different timeframes can make a previously visible level less relevant.
Worked fictional example
Fictional River repeatedly closes near $40 after declines and near $50 after rises. A close at $51 is outside that observed range, but one observation does not establish a durable new trend.
On a small screen, scroll the chart horizontally to read every label.
Observation order / daily periods →
Accessible data table and chart description
Separate fictional daily OHLCV illustration for Support and resistance. Hollow body: close at or above open; filled body: close below open. Table provides exact values.
| Date UTC | Open | High | Low | Close | Volume |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024-01-01 | 40 | 41 | 39 | 40 | 100 |
| 2024-01-02 | 40 | 51 | 39 | 50 | 120 |
| 2024-01-03 | 50 | 51 | 40 | 41 | 0 |
| 2024-01-04 | 41 | 50 | 40 | 49 | 160 |
| 2024-01-05 | 49 | 50 | 39 | 40 | 180 |
| 2024-01-06 | 40 | 52 | 39 | 51 | 200 |
Legend: hollow body = close ≥ open; filled blue body = close < open. Wick = low to high. Direction is also readable from the table, without color.
What could invalidate this interpretation?
Repeated closes through the proposed support zone weaken the claim that it is still holding.
A counterexample
A brief dip to $39 followed by a return to $45 can be a failed break rather than a lasting change.
Check your understanding
Further learning
Original FinanceFD explanations and drawings. For additional context, see Fidelity’s overview of technical analysis, Fidelity’s RSI guide and Investor.gov’s investing introduction.
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