Your first steps into crypto probably have more to do with learning what Bitcoin is or brushing up on a glossary of cryptocurrency specific terms so you have at least some idea of what people are talking about that you follow on various social media sites. Once you have a decent understanding on how to read trading charts and can navigate basic exchanges like Coinbase Pro or Binance, you might want to consider learning how to do technical analysis on your favorite crypto coins. In my latest video I chat with one of Crypto Twitter's favorite chartists, CryptoWendyO, about how to get started with technical analysis as a beginner.

Get Your Tradingview On

In this video we talk about some of the basics of getting started with technical analysis for crypto starting with showing you around every chartists favorite platform, Tradingview! Tradingview.com is a free platform that has all the tools you need to do TA (technical analysis) on your favorite coins. When you first sign up and look at the platform it can be quite confusing, but the key is to play around with it until you get a good handle on how to set up the interface well. We cover details on that in my video here, but the basics consist of searching for the right coin & market in the search box at the top shown below:

As you can see there are a lot of markets to choose from and it indicates where the data is coming from the the right hand side and then the trading pair on the left side like “BTCUSD” which is Bitcoin shown against the US Dollar. 

Second you want to setup your screen. I chose to remove my gridlines, choose the “night” theme, and got rid of the sidebar for maximum screen. If you right click on the screen and choose “Properties” you will get the customization menu like below:

There are a LOT of customization options here, so don't get intimidated! Just play around with it until you find a look and feel that you like. 

Indicators, Indicators, Indicators!

From my simple BTCUSD chart you can see above that all I have showing is the basic candle chart. This is a decent place to get started looking at the basics of TA like Support & Resistance lines which Wendy and I discuss in the video above. Support & Resistance lines are the foundation for technical analysis in my opinion and learning how to spot them and draw them on the chart is paramount to successful technical analysis.

Going a bit deeper we discuss more indicators and as you turn them on and off you can see the screen starts to get a bit complicated. You can turn on more indicators from the tab at the top of your screen:

As we discussed in the video, some of the more popular indicators that people use are MACD, RSI or Stochastic RSI, and Bollinger Bands. While we explore all three of these in the video tutorial in this article I wanted to show you a screen shot with all three on here: 

It's always best to consult several indicators when attempting to confirm future price movement and we give you some tips on that in the video in this article.

Time For A Time Change

While the charts above all show you the same time frames, it is best to look at the chart from several different time frames. Changing the time frame can help you to see what a coin has done in the past as well as up to the minute which gives you a better idea of future price action. You can change the time signature at the top of the screen right next to where you change the coin/market.

In the screenshot above you can see it defaults to 1 Day, so each candle you see on the chart represents 1 day of price action and ultimately shows most of Bitcon's price history. Moving the chart to a 30 minute time signature zooms you in and gives you a better idea of what is happening currently. Look at the difference once I switch it to 30 minute:

Now here is the same chart going to the 5 minute chart and zooming in a bit on the current action (you can zoom in on any chart by using the mouse wheel!):

Nailing The Basics

The above info and video should give you enough to really nail down the basics of technical analysis so you can start doing your own TA and stop relying solely on others advice and charts. Once you have these basics down, study them over and over until they are firmly in your head and take some of the tips and tricks from Wendy on things like doing paper trades or comparing your chart work to others. All of these things will help you learn without getting rekt! Remember, technical analysis is not a guarantee, but rather gives us a good indication of what might happen next. 

I hope this video and the basic explanation of using charts on Tradingview helped you on your way. That's all for today, but until next time…

‘Stache That Crypto Friends!