A level where the buyers stand:price falls to it, and finds a hand.
A price level where buying pressure tends to prevent further downward movement.
Support levels are identified through previous price lows, trendlines, and technical indicators.
In plain words
Support is a price area where falls have stopped before, because buyers there outweighed sellers. Chart readers mark it from earlier lows and expect that buyers may appear there again.
See it move
Reached: Support
Why it matters
Because many people watch the same levels, orders gather around them: buy orders from those expecting a bounce, and stop losses just below from those already holding. A break of support can therefore set off a burst of selling.
Worked example
An example only. The figures are round and invented for the arithmetic: they are not market prices.
A pair has turned up from 1.0900 three times in a month and now trades at 1.0940.
- 1Distance to the marked level1.0940 − 1.0900 = 40 pips.
- 2If the price turns up again at 1.0900, the level has held a fourth time.
- 3If the price moves below 1.0900 and stays there, the level is described as broken, and some chart readers then treat it as possible resistance.
The level records where buying was found before; it does not say which of the two outcomes comes next.
A common mistake
Support is not a floor. The more often a level is tested the more it is talked about, but each test may be the one that fails.
Check yourself
Learn more
- Academy lessonCandlestick patternsThe anatomy of a candle and the single, two- and three-candle patterns most often named in price-action analysis, with their caveats.
- Academy lessonSupport and resistanceWhat support and resistance are, how horizontal levels, trendlines and moving averages are drawn, and what breakouts and false breakouts look like.
- ExplainerThe golden ratio in technical analysis: how Fibonacci tools are builtRetracements, extensions, fans and time zones all come from one number, 1.618. This is how each tool is constructed, how traders read it, and where its limits lie.
- GuideJapanese candlestick patterns: a visual vocabularyDojis, hammers, engulfing bars and stars: what each pattern looks like, what it is taken to say about buyers and sellers, and why context matters more than the shape.
Educational information, not investment advice or a recommendation to trade.