This is downvoted to light grey, but it's excellent advice. All you really need to understand are the concepts of support, resistance, momentum, and trending.
Support: a price which a significant number of market players have decided is probably the least amount the stock could be worth. That is, if the price drops to that point, they will buy. They might be wrong, but it will require an even larger number of people who think the stock is definitely worth less to make them wrong.
Resistance: the flip side of support: a price at which a significant number of market players will sell.
Momentum: the tendency of price to continue in the direction that it's going until it encounters support or resistance. Many traders attempt to profit from the short-term price swings caused by momentum. By doing so, they tend to cause the price to continue to go in that direction.
Trending: what happens when changes in the economy are reflected in the prices of stocks. Such changes don't happen instantaneously; they take time.
Momentum and trending are obviously similar, but I distinguish them in this way: momentum is mostly caused by the flow of information within the markets; trending is caused by changes in the fundamentals.
If you understand these concepts, you can see everything a long-term investor needs to see when looking at a chart.
Support: a price which a significant number of market players have decided is probably the least amount the stock could be worth. That is, if the price drops to that point, they will buy. They might be wrong, but it will require an even larger number of people who think the stock is definitely worth less to make them wrong.
Resistance: the flip side of support: a price at which a significant number of market players will sell.
Momentum: the tendency of price to continue in the direction that it's going until it encounters support or resistance. Many traders attempt to profit from the short-term price swings caused by momentum. By doing so, they tend to cause the price to continue to go in that direction.
Trending: what happens when changes in the economy are reflected in the prices of stocks. Such changes don't happen instantaneously; they take time.
Momentum and trending are obviously similar, but I distinguish them in this way: momentum is mostly caused by the flow of information within the markets; trending is caused by changes in the fundamentals.
If you understand these concepts, you can see everything a long-term investor needs to see when looking at a chart.