How to read DOJI chart pattern correctly?
Candle stick patterns are generally an indication of possible short term changes in price direction (if a reversal pattern). A doji is such a reversal candle, and should be read as there could be a short term change in the direction of price action. A doji is most effective at peaks or troughs, and the outcome can be a higher probability if occuring during overbought conditions (at the peak) or during oversold conditions (at the trough). So a doji should be used for short term changes in direction and not a total change in the overall trend. Although there could be a doji at the very top of an uptrend or at the very bottom of a downtrend, we wouldn't know it was the change of the trend until price action confirms it.  The definition of an uptrend is higher highs and higher lows. The definition of a downtrend is lower lows and lower highs. So an uptrend will not be broken until we have a lower high and confirmed by a lower low, or a lower low confirmed by a lower high. Similarly a downtrend will not be broken until we have a higher low confirmed by a higher high or a higher high followed by a higher low. Another thing to consider is that doji's and other candle stick patters work best when the market is trending, even if they are only short term trends. You should usually wait for confirmation of the change in direction by only taking a long trade if price moves above the high of the doji, or only taking a short trade if price moves below the low of the doji.
Part of 'consideration', I imagine, would be the obligation of either party to follow through on an agreement, not only fair market value. Look at the thought experiment from the opposite perspective.  If you did not pay him $150 (maybe just $50 or even $0), would you be breaking a contractual obligation to him?  If he left after 2 hours because he forgot about a family event and did not finish your move, would he be breaking a contractual obligation to you even if you gave him $150? It seems it can be considered a gift (Update: in all cases) There was no agreement of what either party viewed as full consideration in a mutual exchange.   To put it another way: From your examples, there is no evidence that the performance of either party hinged on receiving mutual consideration from the other.  More Updates from comments: Patterns Matter Similarly to how the IRS may determine W2 employee vs independent contractor, patterns do matter.  If your friend has a pattern of helping people move in exchange for tens of thousands of dollars in gifts every year, the IRS would view that in a different light. A waitress/waiter has a pattern of accepting 'gifts' of tips in exchange for good service as a part of their established job duties. If you gifted your friend with $150/week when they watched your kids every Monday-Wednesday, that would be different. You are establishing a pattern, and I would suggest you may be establishing mutual consideration. In that case, consult a professional if you are worried. Amounts Matter This is why the gift tax exemption was created. The IRS does not care about the amounts in question here. It is too much of a burden to track and account for transactions that are this questionable and this small.  You gift your friend with a $20k car? Now you need to pay attention. Consult your CPA. You gift your friend $1k for helping build your new deck? The IRS does not care. Intent Matters Even in the first case, it is not necessarily true that your friend considers $150 to be mutual consideration for his services. Would he open a business where he offers that rate to the general public? I doubt it. He intends to gift you services out of his own free will, not because there will be an equitable exchange of value.  The intent of both parties is to give a gift. There is no evidence that would suggest otherwise to the IRS, it seems, even if they cared in the first place. "Some banks allow mint.com read-only access via a separate ""access code"" that a customer can create.  This would still allow an attacker to find out how much money you have and transaction details, and may have knowledge of some other information (your account number perhaps, your address, etc). The problem with even this read-only access is that many banks also allow users at other banks to set up a direct debit authorization which allows withdrawals.  And to set the direct debit link up, the main hurdle is to be able to correctly identify the dates and amounts of two small test deposit transactions, which could be done with just read-only access. Most banks only support a single full access password per account, and there you have a bigger potential risk of actual fraudulent activity. But if you discover such activity and report it in a timely manner, you should be refunded. Make sure to check your account frequently. Also make sure to change your passwords once in a while." Well sure but derivatives valuations that you see on this chart are complete bs. Normally the derivative (future or a swap) is actually worth zero. What this chart is tallying up is the notional which is an arbitrary number only used to calculate the P&amp;L on the derivative. Sorry but this is not really the value of the derivative, so hard to see how derivatives on this chart make any sense at all. There are Patterns inside of Patterns. You will see short term patterns (flags / pennants) inside of long term patterns (trend lines, channels) and typically you want to trade those short term patterns in line with the direction of the long term pattern.  Take a look at the attached chart of GPN. I would like to recommend two excellent books on Chart Patterns. Richard W. Schabacker book he wrote in the 1930's. It is the basis for modern technical pattern analysis.  Technical Analysis and Stock Market Profits  Peter Brandt Diary of a Professional Commodity Trader. He takes you through analysis and trades. Have you actually read the Wikipedia article? To calculate the DJIA, the sum of the prices of all 30 stocks is divided by a divisor, the Dow Divisor. The divisor is adjusted in case of stock splits, spinoffs or similar structural changes, to ensure that such events do not in themselves alter the numerical value of the DJIA. Early on, the initial divisor was composed of the original number of component companies; which made the DJIA at first, a simple arithmetic average. The present divisor, after many adjustments, is less than one (meaning the index is larger than the sum of the prices of the components). That is: DJIA = sum(p) / d where p are the prices of the component stocks and d is the Dow Divisor. Events such as stock splits or changes in the list of the companies composing the index alter the sum of the component prices. In these cases, in order to avoid discontinuity in the index, the Dow Divisor is updated so that the quotations right before and after the event coincide: DJIA = sum(p_old) / d_old = sum(p_new) / d_new The Dow Divisor was 0.14602128057775 on December 24, 2015.[40] Presently, every $1 change in price in a particular stock within the average, equates to a 6.848 (or 1 ÷ 0.14602128057775) point movement. Knowing the old prices, new prices (e.g. following a split), and old divisor, you can easily compute the new divisor... Edit: Also, the detailed methodology is published by SP Indices (PDF). Edit #2: For simplicity's sake, assume the DJIA is an index that contains 4 stocks, with a price of $100.00 each. One of the stocks splits 2:1, meaning the new price/share is $50.00. Plugging the numbers into the above equation, we can determine the new Dow Divisor: 400 / 4 = 350 / d => d = 3.5 Thank you all very much for your answers. Another question is, which is a better option, CFA Curriculum or Schweser Notes considering that right now my goal is not to cram for the exam, but to familiarize myself with finance? "The share price on its own has little relevance without looking at variations. In your case, if the stock went from 2.80 to 0.33, you should care only about the 88% drop in value, not what it means in pre-split dollar values. You are correct that you can ""un-split"" to give you an idea of what would have been the dollar value but that should not give you any more information than the variation of 88% would. As for your title question, you should read the chart as if no split occurred as for most intents and purposes it should not affect stock price other than the obvious split." Mostly some custom work i've done myself, bayesian and time series models, but there is some pattern matching. Most TA functions such as MA's, MACD's, BollingerBands, are simple ways of doing time series analysis.  MA's are basic filters.  MACD is essentially a way of viewing acceleration, as its the informational difference between filters.  BB's are mean reverters based on standard deviation/  RSI is a ratio of filtered up to down moves basically generating an indicator based on how strong the market has moved.