The first thing that you need to look for while trying to read a stock chart is the trend. The trend can be upwards, downwards or sideways. If the trend is upwards, it signifies a rise in the price of the stocks of the particular company. A consistent upward trend in the stocks, along with other factors, can be safely assumed to be a good indicator of the fact that a prospective investor would gain from the stocks of the company. This is in accordance with the principle of technical analysis which states that stock prices mostly have a tendency to follow similar patterns in the future as they did in the past.