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Successful traders look to technical analysis to unlock the key to stock price movements in order to identify potentially profitable trading opportunities. Technical analysis is a complex discipline involving price trend lines, chart patterns, and calculated indicators that need to be interpreted to know the optimum time to enter and exit a trade. While it’s not an exact science, successful traders who master technical analysis get it right much more often than they get it wrong.
Trading with technical analysis requires a lot of study and practice. In addition to studying patterns and indicators, you need to master behavioral economics and risk management. The more knowledge and practice you have, the more confidence you gain. The best way to get there is with a quality technical analysis trading course.
The popularity of trading in stocks, penny stocks, options, and forex has led to the proliferation of trading courses, including technical analysis. The problem is many trading courses promise spectacular results but then fail to deliver. To navigate that minefield effectively, we reviewed the top technical analysis courses in six distinct categories.
Investopedia offers its own technical analysis course as part of the Investopedia Academy, but to maintain objectivity, we opted to exclude it from this roundup. If you are interested in this course, please visit the Investopedia Academy.
Udemy
Udemy's Technical Analysis Masterclass covers everything beginning and intermediate traders need to know for a low price of $17.99, making it our choice as the best overall technical analysis course.
World-class provider of educational courses
Beginning to intermediate instruction for less than $40
Courses taught by successful traders
Lifetime access to materials
No opportunity for practical application
As the world's largest online learning marketplace, Udemy has become the go-to source for anything related to investing. Udemy's Technical Analysis Masterclass is one of its more popular courses, offering on-demand video, downloadable resources, practice tests, and lifetime access. Led by Certified Technical Analyst Jyoti Bansal, Udemy's Technical Analysis Masterclass makes our list as the best overall technical analysis course.
Udemy is known for bringing world-class instructors to its education platform, and Jyoti Bansal is no exception. She is a double-Certified Technical Analyst with deep industry experience. As evidenced by the more than 55,000 students who've taken her class with over 11,000 positive reviews, Jyoti really delivers in the class.
In addition to seven on-demand video classes, you get access to seven articles, eight downloadable resources, two practice tests, and four assignments with in-depth explanations. For the low price of $17.99, you also get lifetime access to all materials, including updated content. Upon successful completion of the course, students receive a certificate of completion. You can then follow up the beginning course with the Technical Analysis Masterclass part two for another $17.99. Part two helps you to maximize your knowledge to become a more efficient trader.
CourseMarks, which helps students find the best classes based on student feedback and content freshness and diversity, gives the Technical Analysis Masterclass a rating of 9.8 out of 10.
Entrepreneur.com Store
The Ultimate Candlestick Trading & Analysis Masterclass Bundle by Travis Rose is a content-rich course that can take you from complete novice to trading in just a few weeks. That's why it is our choice as the best technical analysis course for beginners.
Designed specifically for beginners
Comprehensive course
Lifetime access to materials
Top rating
No coaching or mentoring
The Ultimate Candlestick Trading & Analysis Masterclass Bundle is designed for new traders who want to learn a step-by-step process for properly analyzing candlestick charts. Travis Rose, a full-time day trader and investor with more than five years of sustained success, has laid out an extensive course to help novice traders avoid the mistakes and pain points he experienced starting out, making it our choice as the best technical analysis course for beginners.
The five-course bundle is stacked with beginner-friendly content and resources, including 136 lessons, 40 lectures, on-demand videos, 14 multiple-choice quizzes, a free stock trading ebook with bonus in-depth trading strategies, tips, and valuable market resources. It also includes live market examples for watching trades in action.
For $1,000 you get lifetime access to the course content, which is refreshed regularly. While there is no coaching, mentoring, or chat rooms for interactive learning, this extensive, self-paced course can elevate you to a level where you can get more out of a paid trading program.
Travis Rose's courses have earned an average of 4.5 out of five stars on the Entrepreneur.com Store.
Bullish Bears
For beginning traders who want to be a part of the action while learning technical analysis, the Bullish Bears is a great choice. It offers ten free courses and an ebook with free, 7-day access to its trading room and other valuable trading tools, making it our pick as the best technical analysis course for learning while doing.
Free beginner course and ebook
7-day free trial membership with complete access
Low-cost access to comprehensive training resources
24/7 access to chat rooms
Live-stream screen share and other tools for understanding trading action
Few online reviews
For people who prefer experiential learning—learning by doing—Bullish Bears offers a free ebook and courses on technical analysis along with a 7-day free membership trial with complete access to its trading room and other valuable learning tools. That makes the Bullish Bears our choice as the best technical analysis course for learning while doing.
Bullish Bears has made a name for itself as a stock trading service that "pays it forward," based on its desire to help anyone who wants to learn to succeed as a trader. To that end, it has managed to stack its membership with the tools, resources, and instruction anyone could need to develop as a trader for just $49 a month.
In recognition that successful trading begins with sound technical analysis, Bullish Bears added ten free technical analysis courses and an ebook to its extensive learning toolkit. While it's not required, you could subscribe to their free 7-day trial for the opportunity to learn alongside other traders. You'll be exposed to traders utilizing technical analysis to set up your trades and hear their commentary as the trades unfold. At most, it can reinforce your learning, and, at the very least, it can be very motivating.
When the trial is over, you can continue full access to additional courses, the trading room, and valuable trading tools for $49 a month or $249 a year.
StockCharts
StockCharts is a premier provider of chart services that also offers a voluminous library of articles, guides, and resources to learn how to read and interpret them, making it our choice as the best technical analysis course for charting services.
Free access to extensive learning library
Includes free access to charting services
Extensive offering of charts
Low-cost monthly membership
Free charting service is limited
Free chart data is not dynamic
Learning technical analysis through a charting service can be overwhelming for new traders. You could have access to the best charts and analysis tools in the world but, if you can't read and interpret them, they are worthless. StockCharts is a leading chart service that also offers a Charting School with a wide range of free articles, guides, and resources to help traders of any experience level move up the learning curve. That's why we chose StockCharts as the best technical analysis course for charting services.
A good charting service can be an advantage for traders looking for a leg up in technical analysis. StockCharts offers a variety of useful chart types and analysis tools. The more you know about technical analysis and charts, the more valuable they can be. New traders can use StockCharts' Charting School to learn experientially.
The Charting School is an extensive library of dozens of articles organized as course chapters, such as Chart Analysis, Technical Indicators & Overlays, and Market Analysis. In another section, you can learn how to use the various charting tools and resources, such as StockCharts' award-winning financial charting tool and its full-screen, interactive Advanced Charting Platform. The section goes on to teach you how to use the many chart analysis tools available through StockCharts.
The Charting School is free—as is its charting service you can use to start analyzing charts. However, the free service has delayed data and limited access to other tools such as the scanner, intraday charts, and alerts. However, that may be sufficient if you aren't an intraday trader.
StockCharts offers three levels of paid monthly service—Basic ($14.95), Extra ($24.95), and Pro ($39.95)—with varying rates of data. The higher the level of service, the quicker refreshing of the data. Each level offers a one-month free trial.
Chart Guys
You can start with the Chart Guys' excellent beginner's course for free, but the educational resources really begin to flow once you subscribe as a member, which is why we picked the Chart Guys as the best technical analysis course for a comprehensive offering.
Comprehensive beginner's course offering
Extensive trading community
Supportive learning environment
Great value for a $99 membership
No trading room
With its seven modules and 40 lessons of on-demand video content, the beginner's course ranks high as one of the best free course offerings. However, the real learning begins with a paid membership ($99 per month or $899 per year). It is as packed full of educational resources as you will find, making it our choice as the best technical analysis course for comprehensive offering.
The Chart Guys was established in 2015 as an educational resource for traders focusing on technical analysis, but its strength lies in its community of thousands of traders who actively lend their insights and support to each other. Mentoring, group-based learning, and peer-led study groups form a vital pillar of the learning experience.
Its educational library consists of courses, reference materials, and educational videos. The interactive component is comprised of regular live webinars, beginner-friendly conference calls, daily live coverage of the markets, real-time Q&A with the community of professional traders, and individual consultation sessions. All of this is conducted in the context of a 24/7 trading community.
Charting School
When your money is on the line, learning from one of the greats can be priceless, and course designer and instructor JC Parets is one of the most widely followed technical analysts in the world. That makes the Charting School our choice as the best technical analysis course for learning from one of the greats.
Designed and instructed by world-renowned technical analyst
Deep dive into critical technical analysis topics
Fair price for an expert-led course
Course designed primarily for beginners
No coaching, mentoring, or trading community
If you're going to learn something as complex as technical analysis, you might as well learn from one of the best. JC Parets is a world-renowned technical analyst and founder of All-Star Charts. You might recognize JC from one of his many appearances on the major financial media outlets. Fortunately for his many students, one of his strengths is translating complex concepts into terms anyone can understand.
For $495, the Charting School offers a seven-course curriculum designed for beginners. The course combines studio-quality videos with lesson quizzes to help with your retention throughout the course. Each lesson takes you in-depth to learn critical technical analysis concepts such as trend recognition, momentum and relative strength, risk management, and technical analysis in action. The course objective is to have students walk away with the knowledge and skills to initiate profitable trades consistently.
For beginners, the best use of JC Paret's Charting School course may be to use it as a follow-up to another beginner's course to gain valuable insight while reinforcing what you have already learned.
While it's certainly possible to learn technical analysis from a book, the most effective way to learn everything you need to know is from a course. A quality course will include much of the same content as a book, but it adds visual learning along with expert instruction for added insights, context, and real-world demonstration of the concepts. For most people, that is a better investment of their time or money. All the courses in our roundup meet those criteria, but the benefits vary for individuals with different experience levels, learning styles, and budgets.
For example, if you're a complete novice to technical analysis, there is no better course than Travis Rose's Ultimate Candlestick Trading & Analysis Masterclass Bundle. His focus is on sharing his knowledge so you can avoid the mistakes he made starting out.
But, if you prefer to put your knowledge to work while you learn, the Bearish Bulls is a great way to join a trading community that is open to helping new traders.
Having access to top-tier charts and analysis tools is critical for applying your knowledge. StockCharts is one of the best charting services that brings traders along with its standout Charting School.
With its comprehensive offering of educational resources, Chart Guys is a virtual soup-to-nuts source of everything you need to move all the way up the learning curve.
As with any challenging endeavor, you can't go wrong with learning from one of the greats. That's what the Charting School offers. Designed and instructed by the world-renowned technical analyst, JC Parets.
Finally, you can't do better than Udemy's low-cost, in-depth, expert instruction through its Technical Analysis Masterclass—our pick as the best overall technical analysis course.
Unlike fundamental analysis, which looks at a company’s financials and market position to determine if its stock is undervalued or overvalued, technical analysis focuses on the price action to predict future movements with a high probability. By using technical charts to identify a stock’s strengths and weaknesses and reviewing its history of price action, trends, and volume, traders use technical analysis to predict its movement in the short term.
The information gathered through technical analysis is used to predict the likely outcomes of a trade so you can make better trading decisions in an unemotional and unbiased way. It is used in different ways depending on your investment objectives. For example, it could be used by day traders trying to capture short-term profits between the opening and closing bells of the market. Swing traders use it to monitor price changes and identify trends over a more extended period of time. Portfolio managers use technical analysis alongside fundamental analysis to identify investment opportunities for their clients. Generally, any investor who used technical analysis is trying to maximize their return on investment.
You should expect to spend time gaining a fundamental understanding of the critical concepts, such as the purpose of technical analysis, how to read and analyze a stock chart, how to use support and resistance, and how to read and interpret the various chart patterns. Beyond the technical aspects, a good course will delve into behavioral economics and risk management.
The next step is to apply the knowledge you learn. Some courses offer the opportunity to learn while doing. For courses that don't, you can sign up for a demo trading account, such as TD Ameritrade's thinkorswim platform, which allows you to practice trades and backtest them to see how they might have performed over time. The idea is to experience trial and error and build your confidence without actually risking any money.
Not all technical analysis courses are the same. What differentiates the great courses is expert instruction and access to tools and resources to accelerate the learning curve. While most instructors for technical analysis courses claim a successful track record of profitable trades, not all have the unique ability to translate complex concepts into easily understood terms. The most successful trader in the world has no value in a technical analysis course if he makes it difficult to learn. A great course has a comprehensive offering of content, learning resources, and tools so you can progress from learning to doing quickly. Finally, access to the instructor, or a mentor, or a community is critical for addressing your specific needs and questions.
You don't have to spend a dime to access a technical analysis course if you don't want to. Several of the courses in this roundup offer free access to beginning courses. Consider whether you can gain enough from a free course to make the leap from education to practical application. You can always take a free course and then use a demo trading platform to practice. The advantage of some of the more expensive courses is not only the expert instruction, but it's also the access to trading tools and resources that can further advance your learning. A course that offers that, along with access to mentors or a supportive trading community, can be well worth the investment. From the courses in this roundup, that investment can be as low as $15 up to $99 a month for the subscriptions. Other courses give lifetime access, but can charge $1,000+.
Anyone who has ambitions of generating profits through trading should take a technical analysis course. It’s certainly worthwhile for complete novices, but even intermediate and advanced traders can use a course to sharpen their skills, especially if they have access to a community of like-minded traders.
Many trading courses offer technical analysis classes as part of their curriculum, and some are very good. We chose to target trading courses that focus on technical analysis because it is a specialized part of the trading process. In our initial search of technical analysis courses, we found more than 20 U.S.-based online courses. We narrowed the list to a dozen using criteria such as track record, instructor experience, course format, learning resources, mentor or community support, price, and other value-added features. We then compared those to find the best technical analysis courses in six categories.
