The wonderful thing about candlesticks is that you can see the direction of price movements at a glance. Not only do you determine if the candle in total is above or below the previous one, but you may tell by the colours whether it marked a reversal or a continuation of the trend. In that case you don’t have a wick in one or both directions. If there’s no wick in either direction, this is referred to as a Marubozu pattern. In another case, the opening and closing prices could have been the same. If the body of the candle is long with short or non existent wicks, close to Marubozu, this indicates a reasonably steady movement, potentially part of a trend. The color of the candle will tell you if it is an upward or downward movement. On the other hand if the wicks are long and the body is short or non existent, more like the Doji pattern, this could indicate a troubled market with big fluctuations. Trend based trading will tend to be suspicious of Doji patterns, that may be a sign that the market is beginning to become untrustworthy. For example, you can draw trend lines along the highest highs and lowest lows on candlestick charts. These will help you to spot whether a trend is forming, or if the lines are converging, whether a breakout may be anticipated. When you know how to read candlestick charts you can base systems around these suggestions.
Knowing how to read candlestick charts is essential for both stock trading and foreign fx trading. Candlesticks are a record of price movements that may help a trader to identify trends and spot imminent breakouts and reversals or retracements. Many traders may be able to develop worthwhile trading systems almost entirely on the premise of candlestick charts, and many more systems rely on them as a first or primary signal. The open and close prices might be the costs for a day’s trading but mostly you have command over the period and you can set your chart to show a candle for each hour, for five minutes or whatever. If you are planning systems around this kind of chart you may probably wish to take a look at your signals over more than one time period before you open a trade.
Next, I’ll use information from http://www.forexmachines.com/reviews/forex-5-stars/. If shown in monochrome, the candle will be unshaded or white for a fee that rose in the period. In this situation the open price is the bottom of the candle’s wide block and the close price is the apex of the block. In this case of course the upper edge of the body is the open price and the lower edge is the close. In all cases, the high in the period is the top of the vertical line or wick stretching upward from the apex of the block. The low in the period is the bottom of the vertical line or wick running down from the base of the block. Some charts nowadays are shown in two colours. You may have green or blue for a bullish period when the price was rising and red for a bearish period when the price was falling.