Technical Analysis

Our chief market strategist breaks down the day's top business stories and offers insight on how they might impact your trading and investing.

Looking for a top-down approach to analyzing the stock markets before jumping into a trade? Consider looking at market internals such as NYSE advances versus declines, the advance-decline (A/D) line, and the number of S&P 500 stocks that are moving above a specific moving average.

Education is key to trading stocks. The decision to start trading and investing in stocks depends on your personal situation—including whether you have investable assets.

The MACD indicator helps identify the strength, direction, and duration of a price trend. Stock traders can look at MACD crossovers and divergences as trading signals.

Trying to decide which stocks or ETFs to trade? First, create a plan. Screen for stocks that meet criteria in line with your personal financial goals. Then monitor those stocks and set up alerts to help determine when to enter and exit trades.

Some call it a bull trap; others use the more colorful term suckers' rally. Either way, traders don't want to get caught. Is a bounce off the lows for real, or just a ruse?

With so many indicators and charting tools to choose from, it's best to think about what is most important to you and then create a step-by-step approach.

Learn about the Bollinger Bands technical indicator and how it can help identify volatility and overbought/oversold conditions in stocks and indices.

Technicians identify entry and exit signals based off support and resistance bounces or breaks. However, these aren’t always easy to identify.

With so many technical indicators to choose from, it can be tough to choose the ones to use in your stock trading. Consider a top-down approach to help you decide whether to use stock momentum indicators, trend indicators, or consolidating indicators.

The success of every trade involves three elements: the entry, the exit, and what happens in between. Here’s a look at the trade life cycle.

Looking to pick stocks worth trading? You can lay the groundwork for a sound stock selection strategy with a few relatively simple components.

Identifying stocks, options, or futures to trade can be a daunting task. Earnings analysis, sentiment indicators, and charting techniques may help narrow down your choices.

When trading options on futures contracts, the number of choices available—delivery months and options expiration dates—can be overwhelming. Follow the volatility curve to help you whittle it down.

Learning how to trade stocks can seem complex. TD Ameritrade helps simplify the hoops that traders and investors need to jump through to get the trading education they need.

Traders don't look at balance sheets and income statements, right? Not so fast. Fundamental analysis might be able to tell you something your charts can't.

Whether bullish or bearish, the trend is your friend. Try using the average directional index (ADX) to evaluate the strength of a stock trend.

The volume-weighted average price (VWAP) indicates the average price of an intraday period weighted by volume. The value is calculated during the trading day, from open to close, making it a real-time dynamic indicator.

Investing results may depend to some extent on luck, but research and science play a larger role in portfolio strategy.

Explore trading multiple time frames to avoid chart head-fakes that might throw you off your strategy. Plus, identify trade entries and exits even as you ride out long-term trends.

Identifying entry and exit points is crucial for any trading strategy. A simple moving average crossover system can help.

Following trendlines, pennant formations, and other chart patterns can help you identify potential places to enter and exit trades.

Explore options statistics on thinkorswim—implied & historical vol and percentiles, the Sizzle Index, and the put/call ratio. Learn how options stats can help traders and investors make more informed decisions.

Swing trading strategies attempt to capitalize on price fluctuation over the short term—a period of days or weeks—but not intraday movement. Learn how swing trading is used by traders and decide whether it may be right for you.

Build up your charting basics: Try simple moving averages for long-term charts and exponential moving averages for a short-term view.

Once you know charting basics, try four alternative indicators: on-balance volume (OBV), average true range (ATR), plus Thermo Mode and Monkey Bars from thinkorswim® by TD Ameritrade.

Learn how the put/call ratio is calculated and how to use the P/C ratio as an indicator of stock market sentiment.

The average true range indicator could be a new arrow in your quiver of technical analysis tools.

Explore the basics of online stock trading. As a beginner, you'll want to learn the basic fundamentals of trading stocks online, such as buying and selling stocks and monitoring positions.

Trading stocks? Learn basic price chart reading to help identify support and resistance and market entry and exit points.

Can you trade currencies like stocks? There are some similarities between forex and equities. Here's what small investors should know before jumping into currency trading.

Learn how momentum indicators such as MACD, RSI, and CCI can help determine the apparent strength and conviction of a trend.

Short-term traders and long-term investors use technical analysis to help them determine potential entry and exit signals for their investments.

A stochastic oscillator measures the distance between a stock’s closing price and the range of highs and lows to help identify turning points.

Learn the fundamentals of cyclical stocks.TD Ameritrade shares some strategies and signals, from traders and investors, to better understand the cyclical investing concept.

How to spot a market trend? Here are three technical indicators to help.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJI) has scaled all-time high after all-time high this year. But what about transportation index?

New advanced time frame tools and extended data for charts may help traders and investors get an edge in the markets.

There are many ways to hedge your portfolio, but should you?

Learn how using the Volume Profile indicator can help identify potential price trends.

Learn how new drawing tools on thinkorswim can make custom drawing and annotation simple and easily accessible.

The success of a trading strategy doesn’t necessarily depend on its complexity. Learn to choose the style most suited to your personality.

Can trading be taught? The famous “turtle experiment” says it can. And the turtles followed trends.

TD Ameritrade is giving you the ability to create your very own candlestick pattern in their latest thinkorswim platform release.

Ready to brush up on your investing and trading? Here are six of the best investing books of all time.

The S&P 500 finished August with one of its smallest monthly trading ranges. Learn how the Market Forecast indicator might help you make sense of these ranges

The U.S. dollar index (/DX) is strong. Since early May, the /DX has climbed 5.30. What might this mean for stocks?

Support and resistance are two of the most important concepts in technical analysis. How can investors potentially gain an edge by applying them?

Explore the methodology and mechanics of trades anchored around a core position. This approach allows a short-term and long-term view of the same stock.

Bond and stock investors can look to the yield curve for one measure of inflation and interest rate expectations.

Beta, a method of measuring an investment’s volatility relative to the broader market, is one way to gauge risk. It works even better when you remember to re-measure.

Fundamental analysis for momentum traders is easy with thinkorswim’s new Fundamental page.

The Relative Strength Index is technical analysis indicator that may hold clues for the end of a market trend.