Newbie question: How do I read stock charts

[superadvisor]

I tried google, wiki, and some investing sites and I still can't find an easy to read tutorial on what the boxes and lines in a stock chart represent. I understand the basic X and Y properties and the stock price or whatever but everything else...

Example:



???

[pureCra2z]

http://stockcharts.com/school/doku.php?id=chart_school

[kimchi]

That chart has lots of information which would take too long to explain here. I'll just explain what you have and then you can find out what it all means. Starting from the top you have:

OHLCV (open, high, low, close, volume)
RSI (relative strength index)
MA# (moving average (# is the smoothing constant))
MACD (moving average convergence/divergence...followed by the indicator's settings)
MACD histogram

There's other info there, but I'd suggest you look for the above terms on google or a site such as www.investopedia.com which will give you a detailed explaination of how to use the data and what it all means.

[pig4bill]

There are hundreds of books written on chart reading. Don't think that you can read an online tutorial and know how to read a chart.