Every Tuesday during our live trading call, I share my screen and show the TFW community exactly what I'm looking at on the chart.
And almost every week, at least one woman — usually someone who joined in the last few weeks — asks the same thing: "Jenn, I understand what you're pointing to, but I don't really know what the chart is actually telling me."
Honestly? That was me once. Looking at a forex chart for the first time felt like someone handed me a document in a language I'd never seen. Green bars. Red bars. Little lines sticking up and down. Numbers I couldn't make sense of.
Here's the thing: reading a forex chart as a woman new to trading is not as complicated as it looks. You just need someone to walk you through it in plain English — not the intimidating, jargon-heavy way most tutorials do it.
That's what we're doing today. By the end of this, you'll know what a candlestick chart is showing you and what we at TFW Global (formerly Forex for Women) look for before placing any trade. If you want to learn to trade as a woman beginner, this is where it starts.
What Are Candlestick Charts — and Why Do Traders Use Them?
Forex charts display the price of a currency pair (like EUR/USD or GBP/JPY) over time. The most common type is the candlestick chart — and once you understand how to read a single candle, the rest clicks into place naturally.
Every candle represents a specific time period. On a daily chart, each candle represents one full trading day. On a 4-hour chart, each candle represents four hours of price movement.
Each candle captures four pieces of information:
- The opening price — where price was when the candle started
- The closing price — where it ended
- The highest price reached during that period
- The lowest price reached during that period
When you can see all four of those at a glance, you're reading real market information. The candlestick chart is just a visual way of packaging what the market did over a given time.
How Do You Read a Candlestick? Breaking Down Bodies and Wicks
Picture a candle. It has a body (the fat, solid part) and wicks (the thin lines sticking out above and below).
The body shows you the range between the opening and closing price:
- A green candle means price closed higher than it opened — buyers were in control
- A red candle means price closed lower than it opened — sellers were in control
The wicks show you how far price stretched before pulling back. A long upper wick tells you price shot up during that period but got rejected and came back down. That rejection matters — it shows where sellers started fighting back.
Here's where most beginner tutorials stop. But at TFW, we go one step further: we don't just look at single candles in isolation. We look at sequences of candles to spot patterns, confirm direction, and find our specific entry signals.
"I used to freeze up staring at all those candles not knowing which ones mattered. Once I understood I was just looking for a closed candle wick touching one specific line on my chart, everything simplified. It went from overwhelming to: 'Oh, I just need to look for this one thing.'"
How Do You Know Which Direction the Market Is Moving?
Before you analyse the smaller details, you need to understand market direction — and this is simpler than most people make it.
When prices are consistently making higher highs and higher lows, the market is in an uptrend. When prices are making lower highs and lower lows, you're in a downtrend. That's it at its most basic.
One of the best tools for spotting direction quickly? The EMA — exponential moving average. At TFW, we use the 21 EMA as our primary reference line. It draws a smooth curve through price action and immediately tells you whether price is in bullish or bearish territory.
Once you can tell which side of the EMA price is sitting on, you already know whether you should be looking for buy opportunities or sell opportunities. That context makes everything else on the chart easier to interpret.
"The EMAs — if you're not sure what those are, those are my two pink lines on the chart. I want you to have your 21 EMA set and colour coded, however you prefer. Once it's on your chart, you can see immediately which direction the market is leaning. That single piece of context makes everything else make sense."
What Are Support and Resistance Levels — and Do You Really Need Them?
You'll hear these two words constantly in trading education, and they're worth understanding early.
Support is a price level where buyers tend to step in and push price back up. Think of it like a floor — price falls to a certain level and bounces.
Resistance is a price level where sellers tend to push back and drive price back down. Think of it like a ceiling — price rises and gets rejected.
Candles don't randomly shoot up or fall. There are usually reasons behind the moves — and support and resistance levels are often behind them. Once you start spotting these on a chart, price action goes from looking random to telling a coherent story.
On TFW live calls, our coaches walk members through identifying these levels on real charts in real time. You're not studying theory in isolation — you're watching it play out live with explanation.
The TFW approach to chart reading: Before analysing anything else, we identify direction. Is price above or below the 21 EMA? That single question tells you whether to look for buy setups or sell setups — and it removes the majority of confusion that comes from staring at a chart without a clear framework.
What Does TFW Look for First on Any Chart?
When I teach chart reading on live calls, I give every new member the same instruction: don't try to analyse everything at once.
Here's the order we teach it, step by step:
- Check the higher timeframe. What's the daily chart showing you? Is the overall trend up or down?
- Locate the EMA. Are candles trading above or below it?
- Look for the specific entry signal. At TFW, that means a closed candle wick that has touched the EMA — what we call an A+ entry.
- Check your risk before anything else. Where does your stop loss go? Is the risk-to-reward ratio worth the trade?
That's the checklist. Not 15 indicators. Not three different chart types open at the same time. Just a clear, repeatable process that works on every timeframe and every symbol.
"The first thing we're going to look for is the closed candle wick touching the EMA. We're still looking to identify whether we're looking for buy or sell positions — remember, if our candles are up above our EMA line, we're looking for buys. Below it, we're looking for sells. Once that's established, the rest of your analysis becomes much simpler."
How Long Does Chart Reading Actually Take to Learn?
Less time than you'd think — if you have the right framework.
Most women inside TFW go from "I have no idea what I'm looking at" to reading a chart with real competence within their first two to four weeks. That's with live calls twice a week, session replays, and community support — not alone with a YouTube playlist.
The biggest block isn't intelligence. It's not knowing what to look for first. Once you have a framework, chart reading stops feeling like guesswork.
"I'd been on demo for weeks but when I went live I kept second-guessing every candle. I wasn't sure what I was actually supposed to be watching. Once I learned to focus on just the EMA and the candle wick — that one specific signal — it became so much calmer. I stopped trying to read everything and started looking for the one thing."
The other thing nobody tells you: chart reading is a skill you build with repetition, not a concept you understand once and have forever. The women in our community who progress fastest are the ones who open their charts daily — even on days they're not trading — just to observe. You're training your eye, and that takes regular exposure.
Your First Chart Reading Practice Plan
If you're brand new to forex charts, here's a simple approach that won't overwhelm you:
Week 1: Open a demo account on TradingView (it's free). Set up a daily chart on EUR/USD. Don't trade anything. Just watch. Add a 21 EMA and observe where price sits relative to it each day.
Week 2: Start identifying direction. Is price consistently above the EMA? Below it? Notice how the market behaves when price approaches that line.
Week 3: Start identifying individual candles. Which are green? Which are red? Where are the wicks pointing? Start noticing when wicks touch the EMA line.
Week 4: Join a live call inside TFW and watch the chart analysis happen in real time. You'll immediately see how the framework we teach applies to live setups.
The goal in the first month isn't mastery. It's familiarity. You want the chart to feel like a language you recognise — because at that point, learning accelerates fast.
And when you're ready to learn to trade as a woman beginner with a structured system and real-time guidance, that's exactly what TFW Global was built for. Our live calls happen every week and cover chart reading, entries, risk management, and the mindset side — so you're building the full picture alongside women who get it.
Ready to Read Charts With Women Who Actually Get It?
The truth about learning to read forex charts? The chart isn't the hard part.
The hard part is finding a community that teaches you the right framework — simple enough to stick, without dumbing it down so much it becomes useless. And doing it alongside women who are honest about where they started, not just where they ended up.
At TFW Global, we teach a clean, repeatable system that works on every timeframe and every symbol. You'll see it applied live on calls every week, get your specific chart questions answered by coaches who trade this system themselves, and be surrounded by over 2,500 women who are building exactly what you're building.
Once you understand what the chart is telling you — once those green and red candles start to speak to you — everything else in trading becomes more manageable. And it all starts with one thing: having the right framework and the right people to show you how to use it.
Join TFW Global for $35/month and start reading charts with confidence. Check out our About page to meet the coaching team, or dive into our guide on trading indicators for beginners as your next step.
You've got this. And we've got you.
