What is a candlestick?
Every chart you will ever read is built from the same small object. Learn to read one candle properly — not as a colour, but as a tug of war with a start, a finish and two failed attempts — and patterns, structure and momentum stop being memorised shapes and start being obvious.
What do the body and the wicks show?
The body is drawn between the open and the close. If the close is above the open the candle is bullish (usually green or white); if below, bearish (red or black). The wicks — also called shadows — run from the body to the high and to the low. A wick is a record of a rejection: price went there and could not stay.
| Part | Drawn between | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Body | Open and close | Net result of the period: who was in control when it ended |
| Upper wick | Top of body and the high | How far buyers pushed before sellers took it back |
| Lower wick | Bottom of body and the low | How far sellers pushed before buyers took it back |
| Colour | Close vs open | Direction only — says nothing about strength on its own |
Take a 4-hour candle that opens at $60,000, trades up to $61,200, down to $59,400 and closes at $60,900. The range is $1,800. The body is $900 (50% of the range), the upper wick $300 (17%) and the lower wick $600 (33%). Buyers won the period, but the long lower wick says sellers had a real go first and were beaten back — more information than "green".
Why do the wicks matter more than the colour?
Because colour records only the last moment while wicks record the whole fight. A green candle with a long upper wick closed up but was pushed back hard from its high: buyers won on points and lost the final round. A red candle with a long lower wick closed down but found aggressive buying underneath. Two candles can share a colour and mean the opposite thing.
The rule of thumb: a small body with long wicks is indecision or a fight that ended level; a large body with tiny wicks is conviction; a long wick on one side is a rejection of that side. None of these is a signal alone — they are sentences, and sentences need context.
Does the same candle mean the same thing on every timeframe?
No. A hammer on a 5-minute chart is a fight that lasted five minutes among the fastest traders in the market; the same shape on a weekly chart records a week in which sellers pushed price down and were rejected by everyone. Weight of evidence scales with the timeframe. A daily rejection wick at a level tested for months carries far more than a hundred 1-minute wicks. Beginners who trade single candles on low timeframes are reading noise with great precision.
It also matters when the candle is measured. A daily candle that starts at 00:00 UTC and one that starts at 00:00 New York time cover different hours and print different shapes for the same day. Pick one convention (most crypto charts use UTC) and keep it, or your patterns will not be comparable across days.
When does a candle say nothing?
When almost nobody traded it. A dramatic wick on a thin weekend hour or on a small-cap pair with a wide spread is often one order finding no liquidity, not a battle. Check the volume bar under the candle: a rejection on volume is a rejection; a rejection on nothing is a footprint. It also says little in the middle of nowhere — a pin bar halfway between support and resistance has no level to defend, so its "rejection" has no one behind it.
Finally, a candle is not finished until it closes. A 4-hour candle that looks like a strong reversal at 3 hours 50 minutes can close as the opposite. Acting on an unfinished candle is the most common way beginners turn a good pattern into a bad entry.
FAQ
What do the colours of a candlestick mean? Green (or white) means the close was above the open; red (or black) means it was below. The colour records direction only. The size of the body and the length of the wicks carry most of the information.
What is a wick on a candlestick? A wick (or shadow) is the thin line from the body to the period's high or low. It shows how far price travelled before being pushed back — a rejection of that price by the other side.
Is a candlestick better than a line chart? For trading decisions, yes: a line chart plots only closes and hides the highs and lows where rejections happen. A line chart is fine for a quick view of trend.
What timeframe should a beginner read candles on? Start on the daily and 4-hour charts. Candles there summarise many participants over many hours; on 1- and 5-minute charts most shapes are noise.
Read the full lesson on candlesticks
The anatomy above, then the handful of single-candle shapes worth knowing and the context each one needs.
Every key term, one roadmap
The whole slide course — ten free PDF parts, 328 pages.
A candle is a sentence; a pattern is a paragraph; structure is the story. Candlestick patterns shows which multi-candle shapes have a real reason behind them, support and resistance supplies the context that turns a wick into a signal, and timeframes explains why the same shape carries different weight on different charts.