NOTICIAS FOREX

Fibonacci retracement is one of those tools every forex trader hears about in their first few months, right after they learn what a pip is, why spreads matter, and that revenge‑trading is a quick way to donate money to the market. But despite how common Fibonacci is, most new traders still look at those coloured lines on their charts and think, “Brilliant… but what does it actually mean?” This guide breaks down Fibonacci retracement in the simplest way possible: what it is, how it works, and how you can use it to find smarter entries, exits, and stop‑loss levels. All explained in your signature style, friendly, clear, and with a gentle sprinkle of humour. Fibonacci retracement is a technical analysis tool that uses key percentage levels (23.6%, 38.2%, 50%, 61.8%, and 78.6%) to identify where a market may temporarily reverse before continuing its trend. These percentages come from the famous Fibonacci sequence, a series of numbers found everywhere in nature, from flower petals to galaxy spirals. Traders use them to map out potential support and resistance levels. In forex trading, you draw a Fibonacci retracement from a major swing high to a major swing low (or vice‑versa). Your charting platform then automatically plots the Fibonacci levels. Markets rarely move in straight lines. Even strong trends have pullbacks. Fibonacci helps traders estimate where these pullbacks might end. Newbie traders often struggle with entries. Fibonacci levels offer structure, for example, entering at the 38.2% or 61.8% retracement during a trend. Rather than placing stops randomly, traders can tuck them safely beyond a Fibonacci level. When a Fibonacci level overlaps with a trendline, moving average, or previous support/resistance, it adds strength to that level. Step 1: Identify the Trend Uptrend → draw Fibonacci from swing low to swing high. Downtrend → draw Fibonacci from swing high to swing low. Step 2: Wait for Price to Pull Back You’re looking for the pullback to approach one of the major levels (38.2%, 50%, 61.8%). Step 3: Look for Confirmation Examples: Step 4: Plan Your Entry For newbies, the 38.2% and 61.8% levels are the most reliable. Step 5: Set Your Stop‑Loss Place the stop slightly beyond the next Fibonacci level. Step 6: Choose Your Take‑Profit Common choices: Markets are driven by human behaviour. Fibonacci levels tend to work because so many traders watch them. When enough traders expect a reversal at 61.8%… often, the market obliges. If EUR/USD rallies from 1.0800 to 1.1000, then begins to pull back, Fibonacci levels would be: If price shows bullish signals near 1.0900 or 1.0876, these could be potential entries. Many new traders start on the 1-minute or 5-minute chart, usually because it feels exciting. But Fibonacci becomes far more reliable on the higher timeframes (H1, H4, Daily). Once you understand how the levels behave on higher charts, you can then apply them on lower ones with greater confidence. Fibonacci retracement is not a standalone system. The more structure you add, the stronger the analysis. Examples of good structure: If the market is choppy and directionless, Fibonacci becomes little more than decoration. Not every pullback ends at a neat little Fib level. Sometimes price will: This is where confirmation tools become essential. Candlestick patterns like hammers, engulfing candles, or pin bars are especially useful. If the market is stuck in a sideways range, Fibonacci retracement loses its bite. Trends are where it truly shines because pullbacks are cleaner, predictable, and often repeatable. Even though this article is aimed at beginners, it helps to understand where you can take Fibonacci as your trading matures. This happens when: When multiple forms of analysis point to the same place, traders call this “confluence.” These areas tend to attract stronger reactions. Extensions help you estimate future price targets. The common levels are: These are incredibly useful for planning TP1, TP2, and TP3. A level that shows up on both the H4 and Daily chart is far more powerful than a level that only appears on a 5-minute chart. Multi-timeframe Fibonacci analysis helps traders: If a pullback goes beyond the 78.6% level, it can signal that the trend may be losing strength. Many experienced traders watch the 78.6–100% area for signs of a possible reversal. To expand your understanding and help you move toward that 1500‑word mark, here are beginner‑friendly Fibonacci strategies you can actually use. This is the most commonly used Fibonacci approach. How it works: Why it works: You’re entering with the trend at a discounted price, rather than chasing moves. This adds structure for traders who want higher-probability entries. Steps: Why it’s powerful: Two different technical tools pointing to the same price level create a stronger reaction zone. Newbie traders often use the 50 EMA or 200 EMA as dynamic trend indicators. How to combine it: Bonus tip: If price cuts straight through both the EMA and Fib level, stay out. The market is probably shifting direction. Many beginners think the 78.6% retracement means the trend is over. Not necessarily. This deeper Fibonacci level often acts as the last defence of a trend. How to use it: Why it works: Institutions sometimes sweep liquidity past the 61.8% level before reversing, the 78.6% often catches this. To bring your analysis closer to what experienced traders do, here are some advanced yet easy-to-understand concepts. Professionals often draw Fibonacci retracements from multiple swings. If two or more Fibonacci levels overlap, the market tends to treat that area with more respect. If a pullback is extremely shallow (does not even reach 23.6%), the trend may be too strong or too unstable for a safe entry. If a pullback goes beyond 78.6% with no sign of reversal, the trend may be weakening. Rather than randomly choosing TP levels, pros use: One of the biggest challenges for new traders is rushing into trades. Fibonacci naturally slows your decision‑making because it requires waiting for the market to reach a proper discount or premium. This alone saves many traders from blowing their account. Let’s say GBP/USD trends upwards from 1.2500 to 1.2700. You draw your Fibonacci levels from: Your Fib levels would be roughly: Scenario: Price pulls back into the 50% zone, forms a bullish engulfing candle, and the RSI starts rising from oversold territory. Your plan: A clean, structure‑based Fibonacci trade. One of the biggest challenges for new traders isn’t strategy, it’s behaviour. Fibonacci retracement naturally improves trading habits by introducing structure. To become a skilled trader, you must know when a tool should not be used. This is where many newbies struggle. Price often reacts at Fibonacci levels because traders expect it to. This creates a self-fulfilling effect. Smart money often accumulates positions in the 50%–61.8% zone. That’s why these levels are so widely respected. The more traders watch Fibonacci levels, the stronger they become. Markets are driven by collective behaviour, not randomness. Let’s break down a more detailed example to help you visualise the process. Step 1: Identify the Trend EUR/USD is in a clear uptrend, making higher highs and higher lows. Step 2: Select the Swing High and Low Step 3: Draw Fibonacci Low → High Your key retracement levels form automatically. Step 4: Wait for the Pullback Price retraces to 38.2% and forms a hammer candle. Step 5: Confirm With Other Tools Step 6: Enter the Trade Long entry at 1.0924 (38.2%). Step 7: Stop-Loss Placement Below the 50% level at 1.0900. Step 8: Choose Your Take-Profit Fibonacci retracement is one of the most accessible and powerful tools for new forex traders. It gives structure, teaches discipline, and helps remove emotion from your trading decisions. Used correctly, and combined with solid market structure, candlestick confirmation, and basic indicators, Fibonacci retracement can dramatically improve your timing and trade accuracy. Remember: it’s not a magic system. It’s a guide. But for a new trader, it’s one of the best guides you can learn to use early in your trading journey. Fibonacci retracement is a simple yet powerful tool for newbie forex traders. It helps structure your trades, identify smarter entries, and build confidence in reading the market.

The joint strike on Iran is understandably dominating market sentiment this morning. Despite the well-telegraphed build-up of American hardware across the Gulf in recent weeks, Saturday’s intervention took many by surprise, resulting in sharp market movements earlier today. Gold and silver opened with sizeable gaps to the upside this morning, but quickly sought to close them as the session got underway. Gold swiftly came within a few dollars of $5,400 after market open, while silver explored highs of $96 per ounce before retracing the move. Both metals performed admirably last week, with silver in particular gaining 11% by Friday’s close. Despite the weekend’s dramatic events, markets are not fully committed to a particular direction of travel as of yet. If anything, it appears that many market participants were expecting a larger, more drawn-out conflict, leaving traders somewhat confused as to their next course of action. US stock futures are down, with contracts on all major indices slipping around 0.8%, while the US dollar edged slightly higher against other major currencies. Asian stock markets opened lower this morning, forcing the Nikkei 225 down 1.5% upon hearing the opening bell. Over in cryptocurrencies meanwhile, the weekend’s events have left markets almost completely unfazed, with Bitcoin hovering around $66,000 per coin. For all the volatility in precious metals, it is nothing compared to the price action in oil markets. Subject as they are to local pressures, Brent futures smashed through $80 per barrel earlier today before settling back to $76 after the dust settled. The more isolated WTI benchmark remains around $70 at the time of writing. While Iran is a significant producer of oil in the region, the bulk of its output is subject to sanctions and is therefore sold via obscure channels that do not necessarily impact global pricing benchmarks. The bigger problem is the Persian Gulf, and in particular the Strait of Hormuz, on which Iran borders and exerts a certain degree of influence. Roughly 30% of all seaborne oil flows through the Strait, the majority of which is destined for East Asia. As a precautionary measure, shipping companies have ordered their fleets to avoid the Strait for now, leaving hundreds of vessels anchored at sea. According to Oman, an oil tanker flying a flag of convenience was attacked on Sunday morning, resulting in the evacuation of all crew members. Markets remain on high alert for any further developments. Geopolitics aside, there are a number of important events on the economic calendar this week. The Institute for Supply Management will deliver the February PMI figures for the US manufacturing sector later today, followed on Wednesday by a reading on the services sector. Wednesday will also provide an insight into Chinese manufacturing and services, followed by the ADP employment change later in the day. The big employment news of the week arrives on Friday however, with a return to the regularly scheduled non-farm payroll report, which is currently forecasting 60 thousand new jobs. Not much is going on with regard to earnings this week, with the exception of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK) on Monday and Broadcom (AVGO) after market close on Wednesday. Until then, all eyes are on the Middle East. #Crude #Gold #Iran

You held a position overnight, and this morning your account shows a deduction labelled only "swap". No explanation of what it is, how the number was worked out, or why Wednesday's charge was three times the size of Tuesday's. This article settles all of it: what swap is, how the formula works step by step, where to check the rate on MT4 and MT5, why Wednesday charges triple, and how to keep the cost under control. Swap, also called overnight interest, is the charge or credit produced when a position stays open past the daily rollover, driven by the interest-rate gap between the two currencies and the direction of your trade. The calculation is swap rate × lot size × number of nights, and the rate is published in your platform's contract specification. Wednesday collects three nights at once to cover the weekend's settlement days. The cleanest way to see all of this in action is to hold a small position overnight on a demo account and watch the swap column update. See it for yourself on a demo account: A swap fee is the overnight charge applied when a forex position is held across the daily settlement time, and it arises from the interest-rate difference between the two currencies in the pair. It can be money taken out of your account or money paid into it, depending on which currency carries the higher rate and which side of the pair you are holding. On most platforms the same mechanism also goes by the name rollover. Rollover is the daily process of extending an open position to the next trading day instead of settling it. The swap fee is the interest adjustment booked at that moment, which is why the two words often appear interchangeably. The fee exists because every currency carries an interest rate. Buying EUR/USD means holding euros, which earn the euro rate, while effectively borrowing dollars, which cost the dollar rate. Your broker settles the difference between those two rates into your account every night the position stays open. Nothing about it is a penalty; it is the financing cost of holding leveraged currency exposure past the settlement point. One boundary is worth drawing early, because two different products share the word. The swap fee retail traders talk about is the overnight holding charge described above. An FX swap in institutional markets is something else entirely: a contract in which two parties exchange currencies on a spot date and reverse the exchange on a forward date, both legs agreed together. Anyone searching "swap fee" wants the first meaning; this article covers it. The table below draws the line. Swap is priced by direction, so your platform quotes two separate rate fields for every instrument, and a third account type removes the charge altogether. Here is what each one means in practice, followed by a summary table. Swap long is the rate applied to buy positions held overnight, and it is the exact field name you will find in the platform's contract specification. Whether the value is positive or negative follows the rate gap: buy the higher-yielding currency of the pair and the field tends to be positive, buy the lower-yielding one and it tends to be negative. I read this field before any trade I expect to hold more than a day or two. Swap short is the mirror field for sell positions, with one catch: it is not actually a mirror. On the same instrument, swap long and swap short rarely sum to zero, because the broker's pricing adjustment sits on top of the raw rate differential. It is entirely normal to see a pair where the long side earns 4.20 units a night while the short side pays 6.80, and the asymmetry is part of the cost of trading, not an error. A swap-free account, often called an Islamic account, removes overnight interest entirely so that traders whose faith prohibits interest can hold positions past rollover. The concept is simple, the fine print less so: brokers typically substitute a fixed administration fee, cap how many nights a position can be held, or both. If the interest question matters to you, the honest move is to read the broker's alternative charging model before opening the account, since "swap-free" almost never means "cost-free". Each currency in a pair carries its own interest rate, so holding the pair means collecting one side while paying the other. When the gap runs in your favour, swap is credited at the daily settlement time; when it runs against you, it is charged. The platform books the amount automatically at its server's settlement hour and you will see it as a separate line on the position, whether or not you traded that day. A quick directional sketch: if the Australian dollar yields more than the Japanese yen, holding a long AUD/JPY position can earn a nightly credit, while holding the same pair short pays a nightly charge. The two amounts will not be equal, because the broker's pricing adjustment is baked into both rates. Same pair, opposite outcomes, decided purely by direction. Read more：What is a currency pair? Definition, types and examples for beginners One formula covers the whole job: Swap = swap rate × lot size × number of nights The swap rate comes straight from the platform's contract specification, in the swap long and swap short rows. In the background, that rate is the two currencies' interest-rate gap with the broker's adjustment applied, but you never need to rebuild it from central-bank figures; the specification value is the one your account will actually be charged. The only wrinkle is units. The specification usually quotes the rate in points, so there is one conversion step before you get a money amount. Worked through with illustrative numbers: Verification: −$6.20 a night for 3 nights is −$18.60. The figure the platform books should land on the same number, and the first night I hold any new instrument, I still check that it does. Read more：What is a pip in forex trading? How to calculate and use it A swap rate is not a single number handed down from anywhere; it is several elements stacked together. The stack also moves. Rates change when central banks hike or cut, on dates published well in advance in calendars such as the Federal Reserve's FOMC schedule, when market liquidity shifts, and when the broker updates its own pricing, so a position earning positive swap today can be paying negative swap a few months later. The practical rule that follows: never trust a remembered rate or a rate table from an article, including this one. The number that counts is the one in your own platform's specification right now, and if you hold positions for weeks, put a periodic recheck in your routine. Two scenarios, same instrument, same lot size, same rate set, so the only variable is direction. All figures are illustrative. Assume AUD/JPY trades at 97.40, with the specification showing swap long +$4.20 and swap short −$6.80 per standard lot per night. Scenario 1: long AUD/JPY. You buy 1 lot on Monday and close on Friday, which holds the position over four nights: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Wednesday books three nights, so the charged units are 1 + 1 + 3 + 1 = 6. Swap credit = 6 × $4.20 = +$25.20. By Friday the position's swap column shows +25.20, added to whatever the price itself did. Scenario 2: short AUD/JPY. Same week, same lot, but you sell instead. Charged units are again 6, at the short rate: 6 × $6.80 = $40.80 taken from the account. Even if price ends the week exactly where it started, the account is down $40.80 on financing alone. The gap between the two endings is worth staring at for a second: $66 of difference across one week, produced entirely by direction. Before a multi-week hold, that asymmetry belongs in the plan, next to the stop and the target. Treat the swap on a position as something with a life cycle, managed at four points: Since "check the swap" became a fixed line on my pre-trade checklist, holding costs have stopped producing surprises. That is the entire ambition of this section. Swap lives in two places on the platform: the rate you check before opening a trade, and the booked amount you watch while holding one. MT4 and MT5 use nearly identical paths and the same field names, so the steps below cover both. One reminder before you close the window: the values are quoted in points per lot per night, not money. To turn them into a currency amount, run them through the conversion covered in the calculation section above. Once a position has crossed at least one settlement, open the Toolbox (Terminal in MT4) and look at the Trade tab. Every open position row carries a swap column showing the overnight interest accumulated so far, updated after each rollover. It is listed separately from floating profit and loss, which is exactly why an account balance can drift on a day you placed no trades. Most forex instruments charge three nights of swap at Wednesday's rollover. The reason is settlement mechanics: spot forex settles T+2, two business days after the trade. A position held over Wednesday night rolls to a settlement date that lands on the weekend, when no settlement runs, so Saturday's and Sunday's interest is collected in advance in one Wednesday booking. The weekly rhythm looks like this: Two flags to keep in mind. First, the triple day is not universal: some instrument classes book their triple on a different weekday, so check the swap rollover field in your own platform's specification rather than assuming Wednesday. Second, the weekend itself is never charged again; the triple already covers it, which is why Friday night books a single night. The first Wednesday triple on a statement tends to look like an error, and that is exactly how it read to me: a charge three times the size of the previous night's, with no trade to explain it. Ever since, any position I plan to hold past Wednesday gets its triple-day cost counted before the week starts, not discovered after. The management question is really a risk question, so here are the five swap risks that actually cost money, each with its handling. Read more：What Is Spread in Forex? Formula, Calculation & Examples The honest summary: swap risk can be managed, not wished away. Engineering your trading to zero swap usually means giving up the holding periods your strategy needs, which costs more than the financing ever did. A swap fee, or overnight fee, is the interest charged or credited when a trading position stays open past the daily rollover time, and it reflects the interest-rate difference between the two currencies in the pair. Your platform shows it as two fields, swap long and swap short, and the actual values for any instrument live in its contract specification. Closing every position before your platform's rollover time avoids swap entirely, which is why day traders and scalpers rarely pay it. The other routes are choosing instruments and directions with friendlier rates, or using a swap-free account where eligible. Avoiding swap completely usually costs the strategy itself, so most overnight traders manage the fee rather than eliminate it. Two culprits cover most cases. Either you are holding the expensive side of the pair, since long and short rates differ and one direction often pays several times the other, or you held over the triple-swap day, when three nights are booked at once. Check the instrument's swap long and swap short values before opening, and note which weekday its triple falls on. Yes. Any position still open when your platform's server crosses its rollover time is booked one night of swap, every trading day. Weekends are not charged separately; their interest is collected in advance through the midweek triple booking. No separate settlement runs on Saturday or Sunday. The weekend's interest is collected in advance through Wednesday's triple swap, so holding a position over Friday night books a single night, the same as Monday or Tuesday. Yes, when your position sits on the right side of a positive rate differential, swap arrives as a nightly credit. The differential is usually far smaller than ordinary price movement, though, so treat positive swap as a discount on a trade you already wanted rather than an income strategy. Most Islamic scholars consider forex trading permissible when it is done through a swap-free (Islamic) account, where no overnight interest changes hands. Swap on a regular account is interest-like in nature, so traders for whom this matters should choose a swap-free account and confirm how the broker charges instead. Swap is the overnight interest on a held position: the rate gap between two currencies, adjusted by your broker, booked nightly as swap rate × lot size × number of nights. It triples once a week to cover weekend settlement, and both the rate and the running total are visible on the platform, in the contract specification and the position's swap column. None of it is random, and all of it is checkable in under a minute on MT4 or MT5. The yardstick to carry out of this article: before opening any position you intend to hold, read the instrument's swap long and swap short values and multiply your planned nights into the cost. Once I started treating swap as a line item in the trade plan rather than a surprise on the statement, my holding decisions changed shape: some trades shortened, a few flipped direction, and none of them has ambushed me on a Thursday morning since. The RADEX MARKETS editorial team consists of seasoned financial professionals and market observers. Dedicated to delivering objective market summaries, macroeconomic insights, and educational content, the team strives to keep traders well-informed in a fast-paced financial environment. Reviewed by RADEX MARKETS Risk Warning Trading derivatives and leveraged products carries a high level of risk, including the risk of losing substantially more than your initial investment. Related concepts:

A forex chart shows how the price of a currency pair changes over time. Learning how to read forex charts is one of the first core trading skills because a chart tells you where the price has been, what it is doing now and which way the market may be leaning. Opening a trading platform for the first time can feel rather daunting. The screen is full of red and green candles jumping about, while experienced traders appear to recognise the trend at a glance. Meanwhile, you may still be wondering what the lines, numbers and timeframes actually mean. This guide is written for precisely that moment. We will explain what a forex chart is and how to read candlestick, bar, line, Heikin-Ashi and mountain charts. You will also learn how to interpret common candle signals, read charts on MT4 and MT5, choose an appropriate timeframe and avoid the mistakes beginners make most often. The aim is not to turn a chart into a crystal ball, sadly, trading platforms still lack that particular button, but I am working on it! It is to help you read price action clearly and make better-informed trading decisions. Reading a forex chart means identifying the currency pair and axes, understanding each candle's open, high, low and close, and then judging the overall trend from left to right. The vertical axis shows price, the horizontal axis shows time, and the far-right edge represents the most recent market activity. To start your trading journey, open up a trading account with Radex Markets, one of the industry's most trusted Forex brokers. A forex chart is a graphical record of how a currency pair's price has changed over a selected period. The vertical axis displays the exchange rate, the horizontal axis represents time, and the far-right edge shows the latest available price. For example, if GBP/USD is trading at 1.3250, it means one British pound buys 1.3250 US dollars. When the chart rises, the pound is generally strengthening against the dollar; when it falls, the pound is weakening against it. Read more: What is a currency pair? Definition, types and examples for beginners Forex charts can be displayed in several common formats, with each one presenting a different amount of price information. The next section explains how to read the five main chart types and choose the most suitable view. The five main types of forex charts are: Each chart presents price movement differently. Candlestick and bar charts show all four prices for each period, open, high, low and close, while line and mountain charts usually display closing prices only. Heikin-Ashi charts use averaged values to produce a smoother picture of the trend. For most traders, the candlestick chart is the best place to start because it displays the full price range in an easy-to-read format. The following sections explain how each chart works, beginning with candlesticks in greater detail. A candlestick chart shows four prices for every selected period: the open, high, low and close. If you are viewing a daily chart, each candle represents one trading day; on a one-hour chart, each candle represents one hour. The candle's body covers the distance between its opening and closing prices. The thin lines above and below the body are called wicks, showing where the price travelled during the period before pulling back. On 6 August 2026, GBP/USD opened at 1.3468, reached a high of 1.3480, fell to 1.3447 and closed at 1.3455. This produced a bearish body of 13 pips, an upper wick of 12 pips and a lower wick of 8 pips. The figures are based on WSJ historical GBP/USD prices. This candle tells a short story. Buyers initially pushed GBP/USD higher, but sellers took control and forced the price below its opening level. The lower wick shows that buyers responded near the day's low, although not strongly enough to recover the full decline. Daily candle values can vary slightly between platforms because brokers use different server times and price feeds. The reading method, however, remains the same. Once you can read one candle as a brief contest between buyers and sellers, a complete chart becomes a sequence of those stories. For this reason, the rest of this guide will use candlestick charts as its main format. A bar chart carries exactly the same price information as a candlestick chart: the high, low, open and close. The difference is simply how those four prices are displayed. Each vertical bar stretches from the period's lowest price to its highest. A small horizontal notch on the left marks the opening price, while a notch on the right marks the closing price. If the right notch is above the left notch, the price closed higher than it opened. If it is below the left notch, the price closed lower. Bar charts suit traders who prefer an uncluttered, largely uncoloured view and want to concentrate on price structure rather than candle bodies. They provide the same essential facts as candlesticks, although many beginners find them slightly less intuitive at first glance. A line chart joins the closing price of each period to create one continuous line. It provides the cleanest view of market direction because it removes much of the short-term visual noise found on candlestick and bar charts. The trade-off is that each period's open, high and low remain invisible. A line chart may show that GBP/USD closed higher during the day, for example, but it will not reveal how far the price rose or fell before reaching that close. Line charts are useful when you want to step back and judge the longer-term direction without becoming distracted by every intraday fluctuation. However, candlestick charts are generally more suitable for detailed price analysis and trade timing. Heikin-Ashi is an averaged variation of the traditional candlestick chart. Rather than displaying each period's exact opening and closing prices, its candles are calculated using data from the previous candle and average values from the current period. This smoothing reduces some market noise and creates more consistent candle colouring during established trends. A sequence of similarly coloured candles with relatively small opposing wicks can therefore make trend continuation easier to recognise. The price of that smoother view is reduced precision. Heikin-Ashi values are calculated rather than actual traded prices, so they should not be used to set exact entries, exits or stop-loss levels. This chart type is better used to confirm trend direction alongside a standard price chart. Read more: What is a stop-loss order and how to set it A mountain chart is a line chart with the area beneath the price line filled with colour or shading. It normally connects each period's closing price, so it carries the same basic information as a standard line chart. This format makes the overall rise and fall of a currency pair easy to see, which is why mountain charts commonly appear in market presentations, news reports and simple performance summaries. However, the shaded area provides no additional analytical information. It is useful to recognise what a mountain chart shows, but detailed forex analysis is better left to candlestick charts. The shape of a single candle can provide a useful signal about the contest between buyers and sellers. These four candle shapes are among the most common, although their meaning depends on the trend and the price level at which they appear. A long bullish body with short wicks might appear after price breaks above resistance, showing that buyers controlled most of the period. A long bearish body below support suggests the opposite, with sellers applying consistent pressure. A long upper wick with a small body can form when price tests resistance but fails to remain there. It shows rejection of higher prices, although the next candle should confirm whether sellers are genuinely taking control. A long lower wick with a small body may appear when price drops into support and then recovers. This tells you that sellers drove the market lower, but buyers responded before the period closed. A doji forms when the opening and closing prices are nearly identical. It reflects hesitation rather than an automatic reversal, particularly when it appears in the middle of an ordinary price range. The location matters as much as the shape. A rejection candle at a well-established support or resistance level carries more meaning than the same candle floating in the middle of nowhere. Named multi-candle formations are a separate subject covered in the dedicated chart-pattern guide. A clean chart is usually easier to read than one covered in indicators, labels and lines. Start with price, structure and the most important levels; additional tools can always be added when they serve a clear purpose. Personally, I like to trade with a clean and simple chart set-up; it makes life a lot easier and easier to focus on where to enter and exit a trade. Read more: The best forex indicators every trader should use in 2026 Choosing the right forex timeframe is easier when you use two charts together: a larger timeframe to establish the trend and a smaller timeframe to time an entry or exit. A useful guideline is a ratio of roughly 1:4 to 1:6 between the trigger chart and the trend chart. For example, if you use the four-hour chart to identify a possible entry, check the daily chart first to understand the broader direction. This helps prevent a small pullback from being mistaken for a complete market reversal. A day trader might use the one-hour chart to identify the day's direction before moving to the 15-minute chart for a more precise entry. Looking only at a very small timeframe can make ordinary market noise appear far more important than it is. A swing trader can use the daily chart to identify the main trend, support and resistance, then look for a suitable trigger on the four-hour chart. This combination provides useful detail without encouraging constant screen-watching. A position trader may study the weekly chart for the long-term structure and use the daily chart to plan entries and risk levels. Short-lived intraday movements are generally less relevant to a position intended to remain open for weeks or months. The larger chart provides context; the smaller chart provides timing. Using both gives each candle and signal a clearer place within the wider market structure. Read more: Forex Technical Analysis: A Step-by-Step Beginner's Guide I recently learned the importance of checking the larger timeframe through a losing GBP/USD trade. The 15-minute chart appeared to show a bullish reversal, so I bought at 1.2580 while the four-hour chart remained firmly bearish. The price briefly moved in my favour before the wider downtrend resumed and hit my stop at 1.2542. That was a 38-pip loss. At £10 per pip, the trade cost me £380, and the larger chart had been warning me from the beginning. The problem was not that the small-timeframe signal was invisible; it was that I had read it without its proper context. It is an easy mistake to make. One thing in trading is that no matter how long you have been trading the market will always happily teach you a lesson. Common chart-reading mistakes include: Read more: 10 Forex risk management tips every trader should know Chart reading is a foundation skill, not a crystal ball. Its purpose is to organise price information, identify stronger trading scenarios and help you manage uncertainty, not remove that uncertainty altogether. Reading forex charts begins with identifying the currency pair, timeframe, price axis and time axis. Read each candle's open, high, low and close, then follow the chart from left to right to identify whether price is generally rising, falling or moving sideways. Start with a single candle, then examine how it fits into the broader sequence of highs and lows. A bullish candle closes above its opening price, while a bearish candle closes below it, but either signal becomes more meaningful when viewed within the trend and near support or resistance. Forex trading is primarily a skill, although luck can influence the result of any individual trade. Longer-term performance depends more heavily on analysing probabilities, controlling risk and following a consistent process than on correctly guessing every market move. AI can scan charts, identify recurring patterns and organise large amounts of market data. However, interpreting the wider context, judging the reliability of a signal and accepting the financial risk of a decision remain the trader's responsibility. Candlestick charts are the default choice for most forex traders because they display the open, high, low and close in an easy-to-read format. Line charts can be useful when you simply want a cleaner view of the longer-term direction. No. Candles, trend structure, support and resistance can provide a complete basic reading of price action. Indicators are an optional supporting layer and should clarify what you see rather than cover the chart in colourful confusion. Swing traders commonly use the daily chart to identify the main trend and the four-hour chart to time entries and exits. A two-hour chart may provide additional detail, but the daily chart should continue to supply the broader context. Learning how to read forex charts begins with understanding one candle before attempting to interpret the entire market. Each candle records the open, high, low and close, giving you a short account of how buyers and sellers behaved during that period. From there, read the chart from left to right and examine the structure of its highs and lows. Rising highs and lows usually indicate an uptrend, falling highs and lows suggest a downtrend, and an inconsistent structure may signal a ranging market. Finally, place every candle signal within its proper timeframe and price level. A bullish candle on a 15-minute chart means far less if it forms directly beneath resistance or against a strong daily downtrend. Chart reading cannot tell you with certainty what the market will do next. It helps you interpret existing price action and assess the probabilities more clearly. The next step is to open a real chart on a demo account, practise identifying its candles, trends and support and resistance levels, and build experience without risking real money. Lee W. is a seasoned professional trader with over 10 years of experience. Passionate about sharing valuable expertise and unique market insights, Lee W. now serves as an external and independent market analyst for RADEX MARKETS. Reviewed by RADEX MARKETS Risk Warning: Trading derivatives and leveraged products carries a high level of risk, including the risk of losing substantially more than your initial investment. Related concepts:

On Tuesday, for the second time this month, Bitcoin dipped below $63,000 per coin. It may not seem like an important price marker, but it represents a 50% drawdown from last October’s record high of $126,000 and is therefore psychologically important for many market participants. It goes without saying that the price action in cryptocurrencies has been abysmal in recent months. Many projects are now flirting with prices last visited years ago, ranges that many traders had thought they had long since left behind. Unless Bitcoin undergoes a massive rally over the next few days, it will close in the red for a fifth consecutive month. It has not done this since the 2018 bear market, which saw a total drawdown of 85%. At the time, crypto was reeling from the collapse of the initial coin offering boom, which imploded in spectacular fashion after the ICO bubble popped. The current collapse does not have a prevailing narrative behind it because the underlying cause is structural in nature. To put it bluntly, too many people lost too much money back in October. The 10/10 crash wiped out large swathes of the trading population, from small retail to advanced traders to market makers. No one was spared; the lack of liquidity is still being felt to this day. There is very little going on this week with regard to scheduled events. The economic calendar is dry as a bone, the only exception being US PPI figures on Friday. The main event of the week is Nvidia (NVDA) Q4 earnings report, which is set for publication after the closing bell later today. Despite all the panic surrounding tariffs and Iran, stock markets have been relatively muted so far this week. The AI scare trade has emerged once again however, this time marking International Business Machines (IBM) as its target. IBM plummeted 13% on Monday, its worst stock performance in 25 years, following claims from AI startup Anthropic, who said that its Claude Code tool could help modernise the COBOL programming language. COBOL is often cited as an antiquated language with which fewer and fewer programmers are familiar, but one that remains crucial to IBM infrastructure. Whether or not the tool can actually disrupt the status quo is irrelevant; the AI scare trade remains a powerful narrative, at least for the time being. #BTC #IBM #NVDA

According to the Chinese Lunar calendar, the 17th of February 2026 marked the start of the year of the horse. Traders searching for an edge may ask themselves what this could possibly mean for financial markets, after all, as a certain Mr. John Pierpont Morgan once said: “millionaires don’t use astrology, billionaires do”. Strong words, and while there is no historical evidence of the famous financier ever uttering such a phrase, it goes without saying that investors can be a very superstitious bunch. The year of the horse comes around every twelve years, so there should be enough data points to establish at least a partial picture. So how does our four-legged friend measure up to the rest of the roster? Lunar performance of the S&P 500 A fast, but skittish and fickle animal, the horse is hardly the kind of beast investors would want to represent their portfolios, but let us not be too hasty. How have markets fared during previous years of the horse? Using the S&P 500 as a benchmark, we can run the numbers for every lunar year dating back to the late 1920s, which is when Standard & Poor’s began publishing daily index data. The 23rd of January 1928 ushered in the year of the dragon, which would last until the 9th of February 1929, and so on and so forth, lunar year by lunar year until 16th of February 2026, which concluded the year of the snake. We can calculate the annual return for each period, and then average the results across each animal, as displayed below: As per the above chart, at 6.2% the horse is a relatively safe bet, firmly in the middle of the pack. Reliable, but nothing exceptional. The clear winner is the pig, providing an average return of over 15%. The next year of the pig will come around in 2031, so mark your calendars for that. The clear loser is the snake, which is the only animal to yield an average negative return at -1%. Had it not been for the impressive surge in stocks last year, the year of the snake would look even worse. Of course, even with a century of data, each animal has only 8 or 9 data points with which to pad their resumé, so outlying years will heavily skew the results. In fact, the first year of the horse for which we have records, starting on the 30th of January 1930, would experience much of the fallout from the great Wall Street crash of 1929, resulting in a 22% loss for the S&P 500 during that period. 2002 would be another rough year, with the horse bearing the brunt of the dot-com bubble burst, Enron fraud and September 11th attacks, during which the SPX would shed 23%. In contrast, our noble stead would also witness some of the strongest bull markets in history, such as the peacetime boom of 1954, which would yield a massive 37% return. Quantifying volatility The year of the horse seems to go from one extreme to the other, covering some of the most volatile periods in financial markets. Not only that, but such years typically exhibit large price ranges as well as far greater volatility than average. In fitting with their nature, horse years have historically offered plenty of action to traders. By crunching the numbers, we can in fact quantify this phenomenon. If we take the tops and bottoms for each given period and divide by the mean, we obtain a measure of the spread in prices for each lunar year. Sure enough, by this metric, the horse is a wild beast indeed, offering large trading ranges over the course of its reign. Only the tiger provides a wider playing field. Trading ranges are one element, but we can go deeper. To properly understand the trading conditions of a particular period, we need to quantify the market volatility during such times. To do this, we calculate the standard deviation (σ) of daily closing prices across each lunar cycle. This tells us how spread out the different prices are within the range itself. Essentially, this is a measure of how chaotic each year has been. After calculating the standard deviation (σ) for each year, we then divide by the mean (μ) of that period, thereby normalising results and accounting for the huge growth observed in the S&P 500 index over the past century. This gives us the coefficient of variation, a quantifiable measure of the trading volatility within each given year. Finally, we average the coefficient of variation for each Chinese zodiac animal, expressed as a percentage, summarised below: Several observations. Firstly, the horse is a consistently volatile year, beaten only by the ox. Secondly, there does not appear to be a clear relationship between performance and volatility, which is an interesting result in and of itself. Thirdly, with a low of 5.1% and a high of 8.3%, the spread between coefficients is meaningfully large. Our current data set is far from ideal. To obtain a statistically significant result, we would need to roughly double our sample size, which we cannot do without waiting around for another century. The above results are in fact solid enough to suggest a trend, but not robust enough to demonstrate one. Lunar performance of the Nikkei 225 Of course, the S&P 500 is only one index, for one stock market, in one country. Hard to establish global trends with such a limited data set. How do other markets fare according to the Chinese Lunar calendar? Unfortunately, this is where we rapidly encounter a problem. For most markets, the data simply do not exist over a meaningful time frame. Given the twelve-year cycle, a couple of decades of price information is just not enough. We can look up the daily close for the S&P 500 all the way back to 1928 without issue, but the same cannot be said for much else. We do have one overlooked exception however: the Japanese Nikkei 225, for which we have daily records stretching back to 1949. Repeating the same steps as above, we obtain the average results for each Chinese zodiac animal: The first point to note is the wider spread of average returns compared to the S&P 500. The dragon, rat and rabbit can all boast average returns of over 20%, while the horse, sheep, dog, ox and tiger all fail to offer more than 5%. The second point of interest is the fact that our poor horse ranks rock bottom in terms of average returns. If previous results are anything to go by, investors would do well to get out of Japanese stocks as soon as possible. As with the S&P 500, we can also calculate the volatility for each period, using the same methodology as above: Once again, several observations. Firstly, the horse may be on the higher side, but this time is no longer an outlier. The dragon and snake are both more volatile, while the rat is in a league of its own. Secondly, unlike the S&P 500, there does appear to be a link between performance and volatility within the Japanese index. Thirdly, with a low of 5.3% and a high of 12.2%, this time the spread between coefficients is in fact statistically significant. Interestingly, this suggests that changes in performance in the Nikkei 225 across lunar years are not random. Of course, this time around the sample size is even smaller than it was for the S&P 500, making the results extra sensitive to outliers. Nevertheless, a pattern has cautiously presented itself. Final thoughts Analysing the S&P 500 and Nikkei 225 indices according to Chinese lunar cycles reveals some interesting bits of information. The Japanese stock market appears to be more heavily tied to the lunar calendar than its American counterpart, with the dragon, rat and pig being particularly beneficial years. There is a possible explanation to this in how the two financial markets have historically performed. US markets have typically followed shorter, more frequent credit cycles, thereby smoothing over the results. On the other hand, the Japanese economy has followed much more prolonged boom and bust cycles, often lasting decades, with which the lunar cycle has happened to coincide. Either way, if historical patterns are anything to go by, US markets are set for a volatile year. Turning to Benjamin Franklin this time: “by failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail”. Buckle up. → Read the annexe