We would rather see a messy annotated page than a clean printout. The studio table is not a gallery. It is a place to disagree about wicks. These are the marks we want on the paper before you sit down, whether you are in the eight-session group or coming for a review hour.
Four marks, in this order
- Prior trend: a short arrow along the left of the move you think is in force, plus one sentence at the top of the page (“falling from the January high,” “rising since the April low,” “range since May”).
- Levels: two or three horizontals at most, drawn from swing highs or lows you can point to. A page with nine lines is a page with no levels.
- Pattern names: written beside the candle, not over it. Include the family (reversal or continuation) only if you are sure.
- Next bar: a small tick or note on the session that followed. Empty next-bar notes are the most common homework fault.
What to leave off
We do not want indicators stacked on the print. Moving averages, oscillators, and volume histograms belong to other kinds of study. They crowd a candlestick class and give people an excuse to skip the wick. If your software insists on printing them, use a clean daily close-only candlestick view or photocopy with the extras folded under.
Bring the market you actually watch. A student who spends the week on a SET energy name and then prints an S&P example from a website wastes the marking. We can work with SET, USDTHB, gold, and the usual index dailies. Exotic five-minute charts from an offshore desk are possible in a private hour, not in the group.