Candlesticks pack four pieces of information into one shape. Once you can read them at a glance, charts stop looking like noise.
What a single candle shows
Every candle represents one period — one minute, five minutes, an hour, whatever timeframe you have selected — and shows four prices from that period:
| Part | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Open | Price at the start of the period |
| Close | Price at the end of the period |
| High | The highest price reached (top of the upper wick) |
| Low | The lowest price reached (bottom of the lower wick) |
The body spans open to close. The wicks stretch to the high and low.
Reading the shapes
- Long body — one side dominated the whole period with little pushback.
- Small body — the period ended close to where it began; indecision.
- Long upper wick — price was pushed up and rejected.
- Long lower wick — price was pushed down and rejected.
- Long wicks both sides — a period of genuine disagreement.
Wicks are usually more informative than bodies. A long wick marks a price the market visited and refused to accept, which often lines up with a level worth watching.
The mistake to avoid
Reading meaning into every candle. Most candles are noise. The ones worth attention are the ones that appear somewhere significant — at a level, after a long move, or when they look dramatically different to everything around them.
Context first, shape second. A long lower wick at support means something. The same candle in the middle of a quiet range usually does not.
Practise it free
The fastest way to make any of this concrete is to watch it happen. A demo account uses virtual funds, needs no deposit, and behaves exactly like live trading.