How to read a candlestick (open, close, wicks)

Each candlestick summarises the price action over one slice of time — one minute, one hour, one day, whatever your chart's timeframe is set to. It packs four numbers into a single shape: the open, the close, the highest price, and the lowest price during that period.

Learning to read one candle at a glance is a genuinely useful skill. Reading too much into a single candle, on the other hand, is a common beginner trap; candles are hints about behaviour, not signals to trade on their own.

The thick middle part is the "body", stretching between the open and the close. The thin lines above and below are the "wicks" (or shadows), reaching to the highest and lowest prices touched during the period.

Colour shows direction. A bullish candle (often green or white) closed higher than it opened. A bearish candle (often red or black) closed lower than it opened. The colours are just a convention you can change in the platform settings.

Step 1: Note the colour. Green or hollow means buyers won that period; red or filled means sellers won.

Step 2: Look at the body size. A long body means the price moved decisively from open to close. A short body means the open and close finished close together — indecision.

Step 3: Look at the wicks. A long lower wick means the price dropped but buyers pushed it back up. A long upper wick means it rose but sellers pushed it back down. Wicks show where a move was rejected.

Step 4: Read the whole shape in context. A small body with long wicks on both sides is a "doji"-like candle suggesting a balance of buyers and sellers, but it only means something relative to the candles around it.

The real information is in how candles line up. A run of long green bodies tells a different story from a single green candle after a long fall. Always read a candle against its neighbours and the broader trend rather than in isolation.

Beginners often memorise fancy candlestick pattern names and then trade every one they spot. That tends to lose money. Patterns can add a little context, but they are not reliable buy or sell signals by themselves.

No candlestick predicts the future. It describes what already happened in one period. Treat candles as a way to read the mood of the market, not as instructions, and never risk money on a single candle "pattern" alone.