A candlestick is the most information-dense way to draw one slice of time. Every candle encodes four prices — the open, high, low, and close (OHLC) — and the shape that results tells you not just where price ended up, but how it got there and who was in control along the way.
The four prices
- Open — the first traded price of the period.
- High — the highest price reached.
- Low — the lowest price reached.
- Close — the last traded price of the period (the most important of the four).
Body and wicks
The thick part — the body — spans the open and close. A green (up) body means the close was above the open; red (down) means it closed below. The thin lines above and below — the wicks (or shadows) — reach to the high and low. The body shows the net result; the wicks show the ground price covered and gave back.
Read them together. A large body with tiny wicks is conviction — one side dominated start to finish. A small body with long wicks is indecision or rejection — price traveled far in both directions but finished near where it began.
What wicks are telling you
A long lower wick means sellers pushed price down but buyers rejected those lows and lifted it back up — a sign of demand. A long upper wick is the mirror image: buyers reached higher but sellers absorbed them and pressed price back down — a sign of supply. The longer the wick relative to the body, the stronger the rejection.
Why the close matters most
Intraperiod, price can spike anywhere — but the close is the price both sides agreed to carry into the next period. That is why traders wait for a candle to close before acting on it: an unclosed candle can still erase its own wick. "It is not a level until it closes beyond it" is one of the most useful habits you can build.