When people provide their chart analysis and often also give predictions, we see the common strategies for interpretation.

We see triangles that are drawn to make trends easy to spot. A triangle closing in downward can show the time of potential breakout, heading sharply up or down.

We see Fibonacci charts where there are percentages of price ranges that tend to become support and resistance more often than other price ranges.

Often, these analysis tools are helpful because so many people are watching them, everyone has similar expectations both in shorter and medium lengths of time. I often refer to the self-fulfilling prophecy of analysis.

Something that is almost completely overlooked, often for good reason, is momentum.

Momentum deals with more than just the ups and downs of the charts. Beyond just the candles, whether their wicks are facing up or down, whether the time period ends in green or red, whether volume is increasing or decreasing, whether trend lines are being tested, there are some things that we can't see as easily. The main reason is that it can only truly be understood during live market movement. A snapshot of the day's activities, the past week or month, are very helpful, but this information contains nothing about momentum.

So, what do I mean by momentum? In this case, you can think in terms of rate of acceleration compared to speed in driving a car. You may have two cars that can reach 0-60 mph (yeah, none of that silly km stuff lol) in 5 seconds, but you may see one car win a race despite this. Why? If one car accelerates earlier on before slowing ever-so-slightly as it reaches towards 60, it can potentially maintain a lead even if almost perfectly matched in average speed range. In this case, it isn't just whether a car can steadily reach a certain speed within a certain time frame, but whether it ramps up to that speed sooner and more aggressively.

When watching crypto on a candle chart live, you will notice fluctuations in price. The larger the coin's volume, the more frequent this takes place. Bitcoin might have 100 transactions in a single minute's candle, and though in uneventful times, it may only vary by a dollar or two, other times you could see the price change by $30-50, and in the extreme we've had a record set of more than $1500 in 3 minutes (yeah, please don't do THAT again).

Momentum is about the nuance, speed, pace, inertia, acceleration from one condition to another, and one can learn to anticipate the results by having a sense for what those changes mean. Again, in the same way that a candle has a change in the wick direction and gives you a sense the value is about to flip in the opposite direction, momentum can tell you that not only are there small changes in the price that can be seen intra-candle, but something's gearing up for a change, so be ready.

Once events are finished, literally as short a time as the last 1 minute candle, the evidence of momentum is largely gone. We see the signs of the experience we just witnessed in increased volume, large or small candles, the final direction of the wick, the up or down oscillation of Stochastics etc.,  but we only see a conclusion; we don't see the story. Momentum is the true events as they unfold.

What does this look like?

When price goes up and down, we can see this in the changing length of a single candle, where it gets shorter when prices drop and gets taller when prices rise. With momentum, we are looking at the candle getting taller and shorter at a faster pace, meaning something is affecting people's interest in getting in our out of their positions quicker. Once that time period has passed, we just see the result, whether it is a green or red candle, whether it turned up or down.

Momentum can also be seen in the rate that the volume graph increases or diminishes. If people are buying more and more rapidly, watch how this lines up with other indicators, They may be grabbing a lot of market buys just before others enter, and then selling off steeply immediately after. The opposite can also be true.

Surprisingly to some, momentum can also be a telling sign of whether your limit buy positions are likely to get purchased. Even when you put a low order on the books, a coin with extremely active volume and high liquidity can run down, grab your positions along with the others, and come right back up to where it has been averaging. The more orders that sit on the order book in close proximity to one another, the more they can have an amazing ability to get swept up and filled. Many people think the averaged values are a relatively stable, steady result of the order flow, but the truth is, the higher the liquidity, the more orders of larger sizes can average the same value of thinner positions, even fairly far from the average price. A great matching engine will do the math, grab all orders that balance out correctly and bam a whole lotta tradin' goin' on!

If you have a sense for rhythm, motion, dancing, music, or just a general built in sense of timing, you may find that you are extremely good at picking up the nuances of the movement in the market. If so, I recommend you spend more time training with live charts and less time pouring over finished analytics. The truth is, you have an advantage if you can see, sense, and feel the shifts that are coming. It is just as telling as the indicators we are all watching.

I hope you find this interesting and useful.

Gordon Freeman Out.