Educational content only. Not financial advice. Trading crypto carries risk, including total loss.
Open, high, low, close
Every candle summarizes one time period — a minute, an hour, a day, whatever timeframe the chart is set to. Four prices define it: the open (first trade of the period), the high (the highest price traded), the low (the lowest price traded), and the close (the last trade of the period). Everything else on the candle is derived from those four numbers.
Anatomy of a candle
Hover or tab through the diagram below — each part maps to one of the four prices, or to the body that connects them.
The thin lines above and below the body are called wicks or shadows — they show how far price traveled beyond the open-close range before pulling back into it by the close.
What body color means
Most charting tools color a candle one way when the close is above the open (price rose over the period) and the opposite way when the close is below the open (price fell). The exact colors are a display convention chosen by the charting tool, not a universal standard — always check the legend on an unfamiliar chart rather than assuming.
A few basic patterns
- Doji. Open and close sit almost at the same price, leaving a tiny or absent body with wicks on either side. It signals indecision during that period — nothing more on its own.
- Engulfing candle. A candle whose body fully covers the previous candle's body, in the opposite direction. Traders read it as a possible shift in short-term control between buyers and sellers, but a single candle is weak evidence by itself.
- Long wick, small body. Price traveled a long way during the period and mostly reversed by the close — often read as rejection of that price level, again only ever in context.
Timeframes change the story
The same asset can look calm on a weekly chart and violent on a one-minute chart, because each candle on the weekly chart absorbs an entire week of the one-minute noise. Match the timeframe to the question being asked — a chart is a lens, and changing the lens changes what is visible without changing the underlying asset.
Reading charts is not a signal generator
Nothing here predicts a future price. Candlestick patterns describe what already happened and are read differently by different traders; treating any single pattern as a guaranteed signal is a common and expensive mistake. This page is educational only, not financial advice.