2. Chart types – line, bar and candlestick
Every chart is built from four prices for each period. Remember them as OHLC:
- Open – the first traded price of the period.
- High – the highest price during the period.
- Low – the lowest price during the period.
- Close – the last traded price of the period.
A "period" can be one day, one week, 15 minutes – anything. On a daily chart, each candle or bar is one trading day.
2.1 Three ways to draw the same prices
Line chart
Joins the closing prices with a line. Very clean – great for seeing the big picture or comparing long periods. But it hides what happened inside each day. A day that crashed 5% and recovered looks exactly like a quiet day.
Bar chart (OHLC bars)
Each period is a vertical line from low to high. A small tick on the left shows the open, and a tick on the right shows the close. All four prices are there, but your eye has to work harder.
Candlestick chart
Same four prices, drawn as a box (the body) with lines above and below (the wicks or shadows). Colour tells you the direction at a glance:
- Green (or hollow): close is above open – price went up during the period.
- Red (or filled): close is below open – price went down.
That is why most traders today use candlesticks. You can read the battle between buyers and sellers in a second.
Imagine a Test match. One team leads for four days. On the fifth day the other team wins. Who won the match? The one who was ahead at the end.
The closing price is that final score. It shows where buyers and sellers finally agreed to leave the day. That is why most indicators and most traders give special importance to the close.
On your trading app or on TradingView, switch the chart type to candles and keep it there. Hum is school mein ab se sirf candles use karenge.
Every bar or candle is built from Open, High, Low and Close for that period.
Line charts use closing prices, which is why they are so clean – and why they hide intraday action.
- Every period has four prices: open, high, low, close (OHLC).
- Line charts show only closes – clean but limited.
- Bar charts show OHLC with ticks; candlesticks show OHLC with a coloured body and wicks.
- Candlesticks make the buyer–seller battle easy to see. The close is the most important price.
- Ek line mein: Line, bar ya candle – data ek hi hai, par candle mein buyers-sellers ki ladai sabse saaf dikhti hai.