Candle anatomy — reading a single bar
6 min read
Every candle tells the story of a battle between buyers and sellers during one period of time. Before you can read structure, liquidity or volume, you need to read a single candle fluently.
The four prices: OHLC
OHLC stands for Open, High, Low, Close — the four prices every candle contains.
- Open — the first traded price of the period.
- High — the highest price reached.
- Low — the lowest price reached.
- Close — the last traded price; the most important of the four, because it shows who won the battle.
Bodies and wicks
The body (the thick part between open and close) is the *result* of the battle. The wicks (thin lines above and below) are *traces of rejection* — price went there and was pushed back.
A long wick means price visited a level and got rejected hard. In later tracks you will learn that long wicks often mark a liquidity sweep — the single most important footprint smart money leaves on a chart. Remember: the wick is the fight, the body is the verdict.
Green/red (or white/black) only encode whether close is above or below open. The information is in the *proportions*: big body + tiny wicks = conviction; tiny body + long wicks = indecision or rejection.