> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.daytraderincome.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # What is a candlestick? How to read candles - URL: https://www.daytraderincome.com/what-is-a-candlestick/ - Published: 2026-09-19T16:46:45.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-22T22:13:11.000Z - Description: A candlestick shows four things at a glance — open, high, low, close — and the story of who won the period. Here's how to read the body, the wicks, and what they mean. - Author: Indy Karveli - Tags: The setup, Getting started, #Import 2026-10-08 14:50, #Import 2026-10-10 11:04 A candlestick is the basic building block of a price chart — a single shape that shows you four things about a period of trading at a glance: where price opened, where it closed, and the highest and lowest it reached. Once you can read one candle, you can read a chart, because a chart is just thousands of them in a row. ## The anatomy of a candle Every candlestick has two parts: - **The body** — the thick part. It spans the open and the close. If price closed higher than it opened, the body is green (or hollow); if it closed lower, red (or filled). The body tells you who won the period: buyers or sellers. - **The wicks** (or shadows) — the thin lines above and below the body. They show the high and low reached during the period, even if price didn't close there. A long upper wick means price pushed up but got rejected; a long lower wick means it dropped but got bought back. That's it. Four prices — open, high, low, close — in one shape. The Japanese rice traders who invented candlesticks in the 1700s worked out that this simple picture captured the emotional tug-of-war of a market better than a plain line ever could. **DTI** IllustrationWhat one candle tells you HighCloseOpenLowBodyWickUp candle: closed higherHighOpenCloseLowBodyWickDown candle: closed lowerHighCloseOpenLowUp candleHighOpenCloseLowDown candle Each candle shows four prices for its period: where it opened, the highest and lowest it traded, and where it closed. The body runs from open to close; the wicks show the extremes. ## What candles tell you A big green body with small wicks: buyers dominated, cleanly. A big red body: sellers dominated. A small body with long wicks on both sides: a fight with no winner — indecision. A candle with a long lower wick and small body near the top: price fell but buyers stepped in hard, often a sign of a bounce. You don't need to memorize the dozens of named patterns the internet loves. What matters is reading the story: who's winning, and is that changing? A run of strong green bodies is an uptrend with conviction. When the bodies shrink and the wicks grow, conviction is fading. That read — momentum building and fading — is most of what candles are for. ## Candlesticks vs Heikin-Ashi Standard candlesticks show raw price, every twitch and gap. That's honest but noisy — in a trending move, ordinary candles still flicker red and green, which makes the trend hard to hold. [Heikin-Ashi](https://www.daytraderincome.com/what-is-heikin-ashi/) candles solve this by averaging, so a trend shows as a clean run of same-colored candles. I trade Heikin-Ashi for exactly this reason: it filters the noise so the momentum read is clearer. Both are candlestick charts; one just smooths the picture. ## How I use candles I read them for momentum, alongside [market structure](https://www.daytraderincome.com/what-is-market-structure/) for trend. The candles tell me whether a move has strength behind it or is running out; the structure tells me direction. No indicators — just the shapes price is drawing. Every session I trade this way goes on a public [record](https://www.daytraderincome.com/the-record/), so you can see the read in action rather than take my word for how candles work. **Notice.** Nothing here is financial, investment or tax advice, or a recommendation to trade. Trading carries a substantial risk of loss and most people who attempt day trading lose money. [Full disclosures](https://www.daytraderincome.com/privacy/).