A chart is a picture of price over time. The horizontal line at the bottom is time. The vertical line at the side is price. Each mark on the chart is one trade or one period of trading. When you look at a chart first, you see the shape of the market without anyone telling you what to think.

In this level you learn to read that shape. You start with the candle, which is one bar on the chart. A candle shows four prices for its period: open, high, low and close. From there you learn how candles line up into trends, and where price tends to stop and turn. That is support and resistance.

The order matters. Candles come first because everything else is built on them. Trend and support come next because they describe what candles do together. Only after that do indicators appear. An indicator is a calculation drawn from past prices. It does not see the future. It summarises what the chart already shows, often more slowly.

Moving averages, RSI, MACD and Bollinger Bands are the usual indicators. A moving average smooths price into one line. RSI measures how strong recent moves have been. MACD compares two moving averages. Bollinger Bands draw a channel around price based on how much it has been moving. Each one turns price into a simpler line or number.

None of them predicts. They lag, because they are built from prices that have already happened. Two people can look at the same RSI and disagree about what it means. That is normal. The indicator is a summary, not a signal. If you treat it as a signal, you will buy and sell at the same moments as everyone else using the same settings.

Fibonacci levels and price action are different. Fibonacci draws lines at fractions of a past move, such as 38.2 per cent and 61.8 per cent. Price action means reading the candles themselves, without indicators. Smart money concepts, such as order blocks and fair value gaps, are a way of describing where large orders may have been placed. They are ideas about the chart, not proven facts. You will see them used with confidence online. Treat them as one lens among several.

EUR/USD is a currency pair. Its price moves in pips, and at around 1.0850 one pip is usually about 0.0001. Gold, indices, shares and crypto CFDs are different. Gold (XAU/USD) often moves in larger swings than EUR/USD. Crypto CFDs can move a lot in a day and are traded without a wallet. Index and share CFDs track baskets or single companies. Each has its own hours, its own typical movement, and its own costs.

Costs decide the outcome for fast trading. Scalping means taking many small trades in a short time. Each trade pays a spread, and sometimes a commission. If you aim for a few pips per trade, the spread can be a large part of the move. Day trading closes everything before the session ends. Swing and position trading hold for days or weeks, so costs are paid less often. The instrument and the speed have to match.

Sessions and news matter because liquidity changes. The market is busiest when large financial centres are open. News can move price sharply in seconds. A calendar shows when reports are due. This level ends with a plan, a journal and a backtest. A plan says what you will do before you do it. A journal records what actually happened. A backtest checks an idea on past charts. None of these guarantees a result. They show whether your idea held up in the past, which is all a chart can tell you.