All terms
Price zones where buyers or sellers have repeatedly stepped in.
Support is a zone where buying has previously been strong enough to stop a decline. Resistance is where selling has stopped an advance. Both are areas rather than exact lines.
They work partly because many traders watch the same levels, which makes them somewhat self fulfilling. When a level breaks, it often reverses role.
Old resistance that price closes decisively above frequently becomes support on the retest.
That levels are lines on the chart. They are zones where enough people previously decided to act, and they blur, break and get retested. Treating a level as an exact number is how a wick takes you out of a correct idea.
Common questions
Do support and resistance actually work?
Why does support become resistance?
Where this comes up on the site
The guides that actually use this word, rather than a list of everything we have written.
Where to go next
More trading terms
Want this explained out loud?
Some of these land faster in conversation than in writing. Sessions are one to one and you can ask anything, including the things that feel too obvious to ask.