If you’ve read The Technician’s Basic Tool: The Price Chart, you’re probably familiar with the more popular chart types and how they display price information. But knowing the difference between a bar chart and a candlestick chart is only the beginning. Obviously, what’s important is making sense of the price patterns that develop over time. Because price charts are a succinct record of price action, learning how to analyze them is a logical first step in the technical analysis journey. Further, traditional chart patterns are a good first stop on this trip, because they explain many of the basic principles of price movement. We’ll take a look at the simplest kinds of chart patterns and what they reveal about market behavior.