How to read a single candle

One bar on a chart is a candle. A single candle compresses everything that happened in a fixed slice of time into four numbers.

The four numbers

• Open — the price when that slice started
• Close — the price when it ended
• High — the highest price inside it
• Low — the lowest

Body and wick

The thick part between open and close is the body. The thin lines poking out above and below are wicks.

• Close above open is an up candle
• Close below open is a down candle

A long body means the start and end prices were far apart. A long wick means price went that far and came back.

What a wick tells you

A long lower wick means price fell that far and returned before the slice ended. Someone bought down there — that is the trace they left.

A long upper wick is the mirror image: it went up and got pushed back.

The usual mistake

Never judge on one candle alone. The same shape means something completely different depending on where it sits. A long upper wick after a long climb and a long upper wick at the lows are two different stories.

This is for learning and is not investment advice.