What is price action?

Hi, I would like to understand what so many posters here on this board mean by the term "price action".

It seems to mean diff things to diff traders?

Is it just the % change in price? ie. yesterdays close compared to todays close expressed as a percentage?

Price action is measured in % change terms?

eg strong price action = big price move/volatile movement

Or what about if opening price is 10p and closing price is 10p....BUT intraday the price went up to 55p and down to 8p. What can you say about the price action in this example?

Any help would be helpful
Thanks in advance.

I think price action is a confused subject. When people talk about it, it's how the price moves on the chart. They often say things like they don't use indicators. Except support and resistance lines and candlesticks are indicators.

Price action can mean a few things depending on the context. Some people just say those words to mean they are talking about what happened to the price. But it is also a trading method. Looking at a chart, waiting for the chart to reach an appropriate point and then waiting for somekind of 'price action' confirmation ( which is basically just a candlestick pattern) to confirm rejection or confirmation of that level.

jonboy123 said:

Hi, I would like to understand what so many posters here on this board mean by the term "price action".

It seems to mean diff things to diff traders?

Is it just the % change in price? ie. yesterdays close compared to todays close expressed as a percentage?

.

Click to expand...

I would say it's the nature of the journey IN BETWEEN two points - did the market go up in a straight line? Did it meander? did it go up and down 27 times always bouncing off the same levels? was it high volume? low volume?

The reason you seem to think price action has many 'definitions' is that it isn't a technical term, it's just an english language, descriptive term. But in terms of broad usage, what I've said above should be a good starting point for you....

http://www.trade2win.com/boards/first-steps/30825-mrgeckos-briefcase.html

I think there's some good stuff in there to get started with. I find it easy to think of the candles as glyphs that along with some other information (e.g volume, ratios etc) tell the story of what's going on in the market. Once you know how the people who have enough influence to move the market trade (which I still don't as yet so I cant help you lol) you should be able to start to draw your own conclusions as to what's going on.

This is all my opinion btw and I'm not just a learner like you

Price Action is the action of the price. It boils down to this. If you cant read and interpret Canlestics, you cant trade anything, since JCs are the bed rock of Tech. Analysis. Stuff like trendlines, S & R, etc are only confirmations of what you should already know. For more info look at Richard Wyckoff and Steve Nisons books. Have a nice trading day.