A stock is said to move sideways. But it doesn't move directly sideways. It's not like one of those heart machines right after someone dies. It's more like a player in dizzy baseball trying to get to the plate after spinning around five times. The stock goes up for a bit, then it goes back down, then back up, flips to the downside again, and so on. It's moving...it just isn't getting anywhere.
The actual pattern describes a channel. Like...the stock is rubber ball bouncing through a two-dimensional tunnel. It keeps hitting a high point and coming down, before getting to a low point and bouncing back up.
The top of the channel is called resistance. Every time it gets there, traders say, "Ah, that's as high as it usually gets...better sell." Shares have trouble getting above that level.
The lower end of the channel is called support. Each time it gets down there, traders say, "It never goes below this level; I can make a quick buck buying it here and selling it when it gets toward the top of the channel." The stock usually bounces back when it reaches that level.
The resistance and support (represented by two parallel horizontal lines drawn across recent highs and lows) define a trading channel. It's the area a sideways-moving stock sticks to.
Related or Semi-related Video
Finance: What is a Chartist?26 Views
Finance allah shmoop What is a chartist Well here's a
chart and here's a chart and here's a chart All
right Well these are pages from the investing bible of
a chartist A chartist is an investor really a traitor
as they tend to own stocks for a much shorter
period of time than a longer term Really invest or
type person a chartist relies solely on the patterns The
pattern's right there These are all patterns imputed by the
charts that they you know sitting poor threw for hours
and hours So check out this chart see how the
plotted data closely follows the characteristic line there The characteristic
line basically is plodded through all those dots Yes So
they're going to stare at that try to figure out
where that line is going in the future right Get
the crystal ball or all right Well let's look at
this one where the data forms what looks like Well
the head and shoulders of someone who you know doesn't
have a neck that's Just common pattern in trading And
you know if you stopped looking at it and two
thirds of the way through there it's heading down Well
Maybe you'd be short the stock for a few days
and then you see it bottoming and then you'd be
long and try to make money that way Good luck
All right len look at this chart Where is right
here where the data appears to We'll break away from
the established pattern which was all just kind of boring
Lee along down here And then suddenly everything goes up
Yeah start doing its own thing Well maybe the company
reported a good quarter or ah you know the government
cut taxes again Everything went up So these were the
tools of the chartist The chart's a chartist is the
opposite of a fundamental investor meaning that she doesn't know
or care what the company does for a living Really
she doesn't care about their p e ratio nor their
profit margins nor their debt levels on their balance sheet
nor much of anything fundamental about how their business runs
Chartist just care about the pattern they glean from the
charts and all the charts always work until they don't
And what happens when the meteor hits that is that 00:02:06.0 --> [endTime] predictable on a chart Ah
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