Support and resistance are the two pillars of chart-reading. Support is a price zone below the market where buyers have repeatedly emerged, halting declines and turning price back up. Resistance is a price zone above the market where sellers have repeatedly emerged, halting rallies and turning price back down. Together they form the rails inside which most price action takes place.
The key word is zone, not line. Treat every level as having some thickness — a few cents at the equity level, a handful of pips in FX, sometimes meaningful percentages in crypto. A level that has been tested three times within a few cents counts as one support, not three. Drawing pixel-perfect lines is a beginner''s instinct; mature traders draw boxes.
What makes a level strong: multiple touches (three is the conventional threshold for a "valid" level), recent rejections (more recent matters more), round-number gravity (humans cluster orders at psychological levels — 100, 500, 10,000), and higher-time-frame confluence (a level visible on the daily is stronger than one visible only on the hourly).
Levels are not permanent. Every level breaks eventually; the question is when. The most useful trick once a level breaks is role reversal: a broken resistance often becomes new support, and a broken support often becomes new resistance. This isn''t magic — it''s the result of traders who were trapped above (or below) the level now defending their entries, plus new participants treating the broken level as the freshest reference point.
Support and resistance work with candle reads, not against them. A hammer at known support is a meaningfully stronger setup than the same hammer in chop. A bearish engulfing at known resistance is a meaningfully stronger short than the same engulfing in mid-range.