Talking Points:
- As looked at earlier in this module,Fibonacci retracements can help traders to identify possible support/resistance[1].
- We’ve previously discussed how a trader can use Fibonacci retracements on long-term-charts, and by focusing on multiple major moves traders may be able to glean confluent areas of support/resistance. This can provide multiple reasons for buyers or sellers to defend these key spots on the chart, keeping the door open for reversals or retracements.
Fibonacci is wrapped in mystique, and this makes the story around it that much more interesting. But for applicability in markets, the simple version is that Fibonacci retracement levels offer potential areas for support and/or resistance to develop; and because market participants may use these levels in their analysis and, in turn, because these prices have potential impact for price behavior, this can be an excellent addition to the FX traders repertoire of support and resistance analysis.
Origins
Italian mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci is credited with finding the Fibonacci sequence in the 13th century, hence the name ‘Fibonacci’. And while his book Liber Abaci introduced the Fibonacci sequence to the western world, traces can actually be found going back as far as 200 BC in Indian mathematics. The sequence is fairly simple: Two numbers added together produce the next value. So 1+1 = 2, and then 1+2 = 3, and then 2+3 = 5, 5+3 = 8, and so on. The first 22 values of the Fibonacci sequence are printed below:
1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610, 987, 1597, 2584, 4181, 6765, 10946, 17711
This starts to get interesting once we look at the numbers relationship within the sequence to each other. If we take a value and divide by the preceding value, we
