How to read an chartgrade card — in plain English
You'll see 60+ cards on /watch. Each one is the same shape. Here's what every piece means, without the jargon.
The headline
EUR/USD — Looks like it'll go DOWN · 77% strong agreement
- EUR/USD — the pair. Means "Euro vs US Dollar."
- Looks like it'll go DOWN — the engine thinks the price will fall. If you traded this, you'd be selling Euros and buying Dollars (a "short" trade).
- 77% strong agreement — out of 25 different ways we measure the market, most of them point the same way. 77% is high — only act on >70%.
That's the whole call. Direction + how sure.
The buy-now score
8/10 · Great moment to enter
This is a separate question from "which way." It tells you when to enter.
- 8–10 — Good time. Price isn't already overstretched in the direction we want; there's still room.
- 5–7 — OK. The signal is there but the price has already moved a lot — you might be late.
- 1–4 — Wait. Either the price is already exhausted or there's no clean entry.
When direction conviction is high (>70%) but buy-now is low (<5), it usually means "right idea, wrong timing — let it pull back first."
The story
Every card has a short, plain-English paragraph explaining why the engine leans that way. Read this before looking at any other number. If the story doesn't make sense to you, don't trade the signal — the math is doing something you don't understand.
The reference levels
Entry 1.0850 · Stop 1.0915 · Target 1.0720
Three prices. In trading terms:
- Entry — where to open the trade
- Stop — where to close at a loss if you're wrong (don't move this once it's set)
- Target — where to close at a profit if you're right
The gap between entry and stop is how much you risk per pip. The gap between entry and target is how much you stand to make. Good signals have the target gap at least 1.5–2× the stop gap — that's how you stay profitable even with a 50/50 win rate.
The position sizer
This is the most important number on the card. It answers:
"If I want to risk only €20 on this trade, how many units should I buy / sell?"
You type that into your broker. The math accounts for:
- How far the stop is from the entry
- What pair you're trading
- Your account size
- Your risk tolerance per trade (1% is sensible)
If you only learn one feature on chartgrade — learn this one. Most retail traders blow up not because their signals are bad, but because they size positions like they're playing roulette.
The macro chip
Some cards show a little colored chip like:
🔴 EUR ECB Rate Decision · in 3h · H
This means a high-impact news event is coming up for one of the currencies in the pair, within hours. Spreads widen 5–20× when these print. Even great signals get stopped out by the spike. Either close before the print or sit it out.
The bottom line
You don't need to understand "Hurst exponent" or "vol-managed momentum" or "COT positioning." The engine does that math. Your job is:
- Read the story — does it make sense?
- Check the direction — bullish or bearish?
- Confirm the conviction — only act on >70%
- Confirm the buy-now — only act on >5
- Check the macro chip — no high-impact event in the next 4 hours?
- Use the position sizer — never bigger than 1% of your account
- Set the stop and walk away
That's the whole job.
When you're ready for more — turn off Easy Mode and the 25-layer breakdown shows up. Each layer is a different signal type the engine is watching. Read the Library chapters on each (Momentum, Carry, COT, etc.) to understand what they measure.
For now: signal in, story checked, sizer used, stop set, done. That's a complete chartgrade workflow.