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Introduction to stocks chartsThe most common way to display stocks charts is the line chart followed by the bar chart. In the bar chart the vertical line marks the high and low, the left horizontal line marks the opening price and the right horizontal line marks the closing price. If you selected a 5 min chart, that means that each bar reflects the price movement of only 5 minutes. In a daily chart each bar/ candle displays one entire days movement. The type of chart used most by active traders is the candlestick chart. This type of chart has been in use for over 100 years and has its origin in Japan. It is also referred to as a Japanese candlestick chart. The color of the candlestick itself tells us if there was an up - or downtrend in that particular timeframe and makes reading them very easy. There are also numerous indicator based on the shape of the candlestick itself. I will talk about the most common ones later.
The following candlesticks are open candlesticks, meaning that their opening price was lower than the closing price an therefore reflect an overall uptrend. The color used here is green. Sometime people will use white instead.
If the opening price was higher than the closing price you get a closed candlestick that reflects a downtrend. The colors used are usually black or red. The vertical line on the top of the candlestick is always the high, no matter what color the candlestick has. The line on the bottom always marks the low. These lines are also called shadows (upper/lower) or tail. There might be no shadows at all if the opening price marks the high and the closing price the low or vice versa. The colored part is always referred to as “the body” of the candlestick. Obviously there is a lot more to say about stocks charts and more specifically about candlesticks and we will, in the next section where we will look at the most important candlesticks for technical analysis Now we'll move on to the stock indicators chapter. 
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