A candlestick shows four numbers for one slice of time: where the price opened, the highest and lowest it went, and where it closed. The thick body shows open-to-close; the thin wicks show the extremes. Green means it closed higher than it opened; red means lower. That's the whole language.
What are the four numbers inside one candle?
Every candle records four prices for one slice of time: where the price started (the open), the highest it reached (the high), the lowest it touched (the low), and where it ended (the close). Read it like a tiny story. Say a 1-hour candle opens at $100. During that hour the price climbs to $105, gets knocked down to $98, and finishes at $103. The whole drama gets drawn as one shape:
| Part of the candle | What it shows | In our example |
|---|---|---|
| Body (the thick part) | Open to close | $100 up to $103 |
| Upper wick (thin line on top) | The highest price reached | $105 |
| Lower wick (thin line below) | The lowest price reached | $98 |
| Color | Green: closed above the open. Red: closed below | Green |
Once you can read one candle, you can read any chart — it's the same four numbers repeated.
What's the difference between the body and the wicks?
The body shows the result; the wicks show the struggle along the way. A long lower wick means the price was pushed down hard during the candle but recovered before it closed — sellers had their moment, buyers answered. A long upper wick is the reverse: a rally attempt that got sold back down. A big body with tiny wicks means one side was firmly in control from open to close, with little fight. None of this is mystical. It's just a compact drawing of where the price traveled during that window — which battles happened, and who was ahead when the bell rang.
What does the timeframe mean?
The timeframe is simply how much time each candle covers: a 5-minute chart draws a new candle every five minutes, a daily chart draws one per day. It's the same price history zoomed in or out — one daily candle contains the same journey as 24 hourly candles, just summarized. For beginners, the useful habit is checking more than one zoom level: the 5-minute chart can look like chaos while the daily chart shows a calm, steady drift, and both are true. Shorter timeframes contain more noise — random wiggles that mean very little — so most beginners are better served reading daily or 4-hour candles first.
