Price has memory. Levels where the market reversed before attract orders the next time price approaches — profit-taking, new entries, stops clustered just beyond. That self-fulfilling crowd behaviour is why support and resistance work often enough to matter, and why they are the first thing worth drawing on any chart.
Zones, not lines
A level is an area, not a price to the fifth decimal. Draw support and resistance as zones around swing highs and lows on the daily and four-hour chart, and expect price to overshoot or undershoot them by a spread or two. Round numbers and the previous day’s high and low earn a place on the chart for one reason: enough participants watch them that they behave like levels.
Structure is the trend, defined
- Uptrend — a sequence of higher highs and higher lows. The trend is intact while each pullback bottoms above the prior low.
- Downtrend — lower highs and lower lows, the mirror image.
- Range — price oscillating between a defined floor and ceiling, with no sequence either way.
This turns "trend" from a feeling into a test: an uptrend has not ended because price dipped — it ends when a pullback breaks below the prior higher low. Until structure breaks, pullbacks into support are continuation opportunities; after it breaks, the same dip is a warning.
Break or bounce
At every level there are only two trades: the bounce (price respects the level again) and the break (it goes through and the level flips roles — old resistance becoming new support). False breaks are common enough that many desks prefer the retest: let price break, wait for it to come back and confirm the level from the other side, then act. You give up the first pips of the move in exchange for evidence. Levels also age — a zone that held three times last month matters; one from two years ago mostly does not.
Mark the levels first, read the structure second, and only then ask what any candle means. That order of operations is most of what "technical analysis" usefully is.