One candle, one session
Each candle on a daily chart is one trading session. It records four prices: where the session opened, the highest and lowest trades, and where it closed.
The thick part is the body, drawn between the open and the close. On this site a green body closed above its open and a red body closed below it.
The thin lines above and below are the wicks. They reach the session's high and low, so a long wick shows prices that traded during the day but did not hold to the close.
What shapes tell you
A long body with short wicks is a session that moved one way and stayed there. A small body with long wicks on both sides is a session that went back and forth and ended near where it began.
A long lower wick means sellers pushed the price down during the session and buyers brought it back up before the close. A long upper wick is the reverse.
One candle is a small piece of evidence. Read it beside the candles before it, the volume under it and the levels around it, never on its own.
Volume under the candle
The bars along the bottom of the chart are volume, the number of shares traded in each session. A big move on heavy volume had many traders behind it; the same move on thin volume may have been a few trades.
Practice
- The chart opens in bar replay, with the sessions after 30 March 2026 hidden.
- Press the right arrow key, or the step button, to add one session at a time.
- Before each step, describe the last candle in one sentence: which way it closed, how big the body is, how long the wicks are.
Where this is used here
This lesson explains how to read prices and the tools here. It is not advice to buy or sell anything.