← Course · Room 00 Chart Literacy · Lesson 1 of 106

Candles

Every candle answers four questions about one slice of time: where did price open, how high did it trade, how low did it trade, and where did it close.

Those four numbers are not drawn — they are left behind. Watch one interval happen, and watch the candle it becomes:

09:30:00 — the interval opens. The first trade is the OPEN, and right now it is all this candle knows.

One interval of movement, compressed into four numbers. The wick is the part the market threw away.

One green candle: the body is open→close, the wicks are the extremes price touched but could not hold.

The body — the thick part — runs from open to close. Green means the close is above the open (buyers won the interval); red means the close is below it. The wicks — the thin lines — mark the extremes price touched but couldn't hold.

Nothing about a red candle is a different kind of object. It is the same four numbers in the same places — the close simply landed under the open instead of over it:

Same start: the first trade of the interval is the OPEN, at 2.72.

The same four questions, answered the other way round. Body 2.44→2.72, wicks up to 2.90 and down to 2.28.

That "couldn't hold" is the important part. A wick is a rejected price. Somebody bought the very top of a long upper wick, and the market immediately told them no.

Position check

The third candle — tiny body, very long upper wick. What happened during that interval?

Three shapes carry most of the information you need at first:

The three shapes, side by side: domination, deadlock, refusal.

Full-body candle (big body, small wicks): one side dominated open-to-close. Real conviction — especially with volume behind it.
Doji (tiny body, wicks both ways): the interval was a fight and nobody won. On its own, noise. At the top of a big run, a first hint that buyers are tiring.
Long-wick rejection (small body, one dominant wick): a price was tried and refused. The wick's direction tells you who got refused — upper wick = buyers rejected, lower wick = sellers rejected.

Position check

In small caps, why should a single dramatic candle be read with suspicion before checking anything else?

▪ Drill — pass it to unlock the next lesson

Tap the candle whose high was REJECTED — the failed push up.