Foundations · 6 min read
Candlestick basics
A candle compresses a period of trading into four numbers and one shape. Learning to read that shape quickly is the first skill of chart reading — and knowing what it leaves out is the second.
Four prices, one shape
Every candle covers a fixed slice of time — one minute, four hours, one week. Within that slice it records the open (first price), the high (highest), the low (lowest) and the close (last). Together these are called OHLC.
The thick part, the body, spans from open to close. The thin lines above and below, the wicks (or shadows), reach up to the high and down to the low. On Velqorena, a body is green when the close is above the open and red when it is below.
Live chart · Binance spot data. Drag to pan.
Reading the body
A long body means price travelled a long way from where it started and finished near one extreme: one side was in control for most of the period. A short body means open and close were close together, whatever happened in between.
Body length only makes sense relative to its neighbours. A 1% candle is large on a quiet hourly chart and unremarkable on a weekly one. Compare with the candles around it, or with the ATR indicator, before calling anything “big”.
Reading the wicks
Wicks show where price went but could not stay. A long upper wick says the period reached much higher and then gave most of it back before the close; a long lower wick says the reverse.
Wicks are easy to over-read. On short timeframes they are often just noise. They become more informative when several appear at the same price, or when they are unusually long compared with the rest of the chart.
What a candle leaves out
A candle does not show the order in which things happened. A green candle with long wicks might have fallen first and then risen, or risen, fallen and risen again. Drop to a lower timeframe to see the path inside it.
It also says nothing about why. Candles are a record, and single-candle patterns with dramatic names carry much less information than their names suggest. Context — the trend, nearby levels, volume — matters far more than any one shape.
Try it on the chart
Open the chart, zoom in until candles are wide, and move the crosshair along them: the legend at the top left shows the exact OHLC and volume of the candle under the cursor. Then switch between the 1h and 4h timeframes and notice how four hourly candles fold into one.
Velqorena articles explain how tools work using past price data. They are not investment advice and do not suggest any trade.