Basics
How to actually read a candlestick chart
Most beginners read candles like a stoplight: green good, red bad. That misses the whole point. A candle isn't a signal — it's a record of a fight, and the shape tells you who was winning when the bell rang.
Body and wick, decoded
Each candle is exactly one time period. On BTCUSD set to the 1h chart, one candle is one hour of trading, start to finish.
- Body: the distance from the open to the close. Green means price closed above where it opened; red means it closed below. That's the net result of the period.
- Wick (the thin line): the high and low price actually reached — and got rejected from. A wick is territory buyers or sellers tried to hold and lost.
So a long upper wick isn't neutral. Price pushed up, then sellers dragged it back before the close. On a daily EURUSD candle, that upper wick can mark a level the market refused to accept — worth more than the color alone.
The candle is only worth its timeframe
A 1-minute candle is a blink; a doji there is noise. A 1D candle is a whole session of decisions by everyone watching AAPL that day. Same shape, completely different weight. Before you read any candle, know what one candle means — see choosing a timeframe.
Read the story, not the color. A red candle with a long lower wick means sellers tried to break down and failed — buyers stepped in below. That's a different day than a plain red body that closed on its lows.