Candlestick Chart

Each candle on a candlestick chart tells the story of one period at a glance. The body — the filled rectangle — spans the distance between the Open and Close prices. The thin lines above and below the body are called wicks (or shadows), and they reach out to the High and Low. If the Close is higher than the Open, the candle is typically colored green or white, meaning prices rose during that period. If the Close is lower, the candle is red or black, meaning they fell.

Candlestick charts originated in 18th-century Japanese rice markets and were adopted widely in Western finance during the late 20th century. They appear across every asset class — stocks, commodities, currencies, and crypto — because they pack more information into a single bar than a simple line chart. A line chart shows only the close; a candlestick shows the full battlefield of that session. The guide on reading price charts covers how these visuals are constructed and interpreted.

A common confusion is focusing only on candle color and ignoring wick length. A long upper wick on a green candle, for example, shows that prices surged to a high but then retreated before the close — the body alone would not reveal that reversal. Another misread is assuming longer time-frame candles (weekly, monthly) are simply bigger versions of daily ones; they represent entirely different periods of trading activity compressed into one shape.