Trend. Support & resistance. Volume confirmation. Every chart you read today rests on an idea Dow first put into print between 1899 and 1902.
So the foundation starts here.
Distribution began in Aug 2018. RBI rejected Rana Kapoor's CEO extension only in Sept 2018. AT-1 write-downs came 18 months later.
Top made on Jan 14, 2020. India's first COVID case: Jan 30. National lockdown: Mar 24. By then, 39% was already priced in.
Priced in de-dollarization, BRICS reserve shifts, and geopolitical fragmentation before any of it was consensus. By the time CME hiked margins to 9%, the trend was 18 months old.
Smart money buys quietly while sentiment is at its worst.
Trend becomes obvious. Headlines catch up. The crowd arrives.
Smart money sells into euphoria. Volume spikes; price stalls.
A move in one index — without an echo in the other — is suspect. Genuine trends pull related markets together.
Price without volume is a rumour. Genuine trends are fed by participation — rallies on expanding volume, declines on heavy selling.
Watch what people are willing to put behind their conviction.
A trend persists. It does not require you to predict — only to recognise when it has changed.
Higher highs and higher lows. Pullbacks are bought; supply is absorbed.
Lower highs and lower lows. Rallies are sold; demand is overwhelmed.
Range-bound. Buyers and sellers in balance. No commitment from either side.
Long before Wall Street, traders at the Dōjima Rice Exchange in Osaka were already mapping the daily push-and-pull between buyers and sellers — using a notation that has barely changed in two and a half centuries.
Four data points from a session — open, high, low, close — drawn as one body and two wicks. Colour tells you who won.
Bulls or bears — and by how much. Body shows conviction; wicks reveal rejection.
Body = conviction. Wicks = rejection. Where they happen — at support, at resistance, mid-trend — decides what they mean.
Decisive session. One side dominated from open to close. Strong conviction in that direction.
No winner. Price travelled far in both directions but closed near where it opened. Battle, no resolution.
Bears pushed; bulls bought it back. Often a reversal signal at support.
Bulls pushed; bears rejected. Often a reversal signal at resistance.
Single-candle patterns that appear constantly. Context — trend & level — decides what they mean.
Indecision. Open ≈ Close. Often signals a possible turn at extremes.
Small body at top, long lower wick. Bullish reversal in a downtrend.
Small body at bottom, long upper wick. Bearish reversal in an uptrend.
Big body, almost no wicks. One side dominated the entire session.
Price contains everything you need to know — read it first, opinions later.
Trade with the primary trend; respect that it persists until proven otherwise.
Volume confirms. Price alone is a hypothesis.
Each candle is a sentence: body = conviction, wicks = rejection.
Context — trend and level — decides what a single candle actually means.
Part Two of the Foundations module covers chart types and volume analysis in depth.
Live sessions, weekly market reads, and the full course archive — direct from Vishal Mehta, CMT.