Thanks for a detailed explanation of all this - I know the basics of reading candlestick charts but I still have trouble understanding them and using them productively. Do you have any suggestions on resources to help educate myself?
In the meantime I'm very thankful for posts like these!
I learned everything off of babypips.com - which is a website dedicated to technical analysis for forex traders. In terms of actual usage, it'll all be about practice - so if you want to get more comfortable you can always create a demo account.
Another way to learn is to follow traders on tradingview.com that you like. A lot of them use basic technical analysis as trading signals, my personal favorite is below:
https://www.tradingview.com/u/FxCanli/
This is great! thanks so much for the suggestions! :D