The night after his loss felt longer than usual.
Raka sat in the corner of his dimly lit room, the glow from his old Android phone casting dancing shadows on the wall. His portfolio was a graveyard. The chart that had once risen like a miracle now looked like a trap he willingly walked into.
He replayed the moment in his mind, again and again—his coin had pumped 17% in an hour. Then, in the next ten minutes, it dumped 25%. He hadn't placed a stop-loss. He thought he was safe. He thought he was smart.
He was wrong.
He hadn't lost millions, no—but for someone who started with nothing, even losing $20 felt like losing a lung.
He opened his trading app and stared at the 5-minute chart.
Green bars.
Red bars.
Wicks above, tails below.
He didn't understand them, not yet. But he could feel they meant something. Like trying to read a foreign language where the letters moved, screamed, and cried. There was emotion in those candles. Panic. Hope. Greed. Fear.
"Apakah grafik ini sebenarnya punya pola?"
"Apakah ini bukan cuma kebetulan?"
He typed into Google:
"Cara membaca candlestick crypto."
It opened a rabbit hole he never expected.
The first thing he found was a blog post titled "The Story Behind Every Candle."
It wasn't technical. It was poetic.
"Each candle is a battle between buyers and sellers. The wick shows hesitation. The body shows conviction. Together, they reveal the psychology of the market—if you know how to listen."
Raka didn't sleep that night.
He studied.
He learned about:
Doji candles – indecision.
Engulfing candles – potential reversal.
Hammer and hanging man – signs of exhaustion.
Support and resistance – invisible walls drawn by history.
He drew patterns in his notebook. Badly. But they made sense to him. It was like learning music. You didn't need to understand every note—you just needed to feel the rhythm.
"So... it's not the price that matters. It's how the price moves."
The market wasn't chaos anymore.
It was structured chaos.
The next few days became a ritual.
Before breakfast, he opened the BTC/USDT chart.
15-minute timeframe. One hour. Four hour.
He didn't trade. Not yet. He just watched.
He followed how candles reacted to certain price levels.
He noticed how some candles had long wicks—rejections.
He noticed when a small candle formed after a series of big ones—consolidation.
Then he saw it: a double bottom pattern. Just like in the article he had read. Two failed attempts to push the price lower, followed by a small green candle.
He whispered, "Reversal?"
He didn't act on it.
But two hours later, price shot up.
He felt the rush—not because he made money, but because he understood.
That was the real reward.
One evening, he joined a free Zoom class titled "Basic Price Action: What the Candles Don't Tell You Directly." It was hosted by someone named @AltSlayer, a well-known trader in Southeast Asia.
Most of the session was overwhelming, but one sentence stuck with Raka:
"Charts are not predictions. They are reactions. You don't trade the future. You trade human behavior—repeated, emotional, and mostly irrational."
That hit him.
Hard.
He looked back at his own emotional reactions:
Entering a trade because of FOMO.
Holding it because of hope.
Refusing to sell because of pride.
Losing because of fear.
The charts weren't the problem. He was.
But charts… they were the mirror.
Days passed.
He started recognizing common setups.
He didn't trust them yet—but they became familiar faces in a dark alley.
One night, he spotted a hammer candle at a support zone. Then came a green engulfing candle. Volume ticked up.
His heart pounded.
"Buy?"
He didn't.
He waited.
But this time, he wrote it down in his notebook:
"Pattern: Hammer + Engulfing at support. Time: 1H. Coin: SOL/USDT. Result: +3.8% in 2 hours (I watched, didn't enter)."
That entry became his first true paper trade. A trade of the mind. No risk, but real discipline.
He smiled.
This wasn't gambling anymore.
This was learning.
By the end of the week, his notebook had 9 pages of patterns. All hand-written. All with fake trades. Some would have been losses. Some would've been wins.
But one thing was certain: he was getting better.
Raka realized he didn't need 1,000 indicators.
He needed clarity.
Candles gave him that.
They didn't lie.
They didn't sugarcoat.
They just showed the truth.
That night, he wrote a sentence at the top of a fresh page:
"In chaos, candles give light."
He closed the notebook, exhaled slowly, and for the first time since his first loss, he felt calm.
He wasn't rich.
But he wasn't blind anymore.
The chaos was still there.
But now, he had a candle in his hand.