Comparing Candlestick to Bar Charts

A big difference between the bar charts common in North America and the Japanese candlestick line is the relationship between opening and closing prices. We place more emphasis on the progression of today's closing price from yesterday's close. In Japan, chartists are more interested in the relationship between the closing price and the opening price of the same trading day.

A price chart that displays the high, low, open, and close for a security each day over a specified period of time.

When first looking at a candlestick chart, the student of the more common bar charts may be confused; however, just like a bar chart, the daily candlestick line contains the market's open, high, low and close of a specific day.

Now this is where the system takes on a whole new look: the candlestick has a wide part, which is called the "real body".

This real body represents the range between the open and close of that day's trading. When the real body is filled in or black, it means the close was lower than the open.

If the real body is empty, it means the opposite: the close was higher than the open.

Just above and below the real body are the "shadows". Chartists have always thought of these as the wicks of the candle, and it is the shadows that show the high and low prices of that day's trading.

If the upper shadow on the filled-in body is short, it indicates that the open that day was closer to the high of the day.

And a short upper shadow on a white or unfilled body dictates that the close was near the high. The relationship between the day's open, high, low, and close determine the look of the daily candlestick.

Real bodies can be either long or short and either black or white. Shadows can also be either long or short.

In the chart below of EBAY, you see the 'long black body', or 'long black line'.
The long black line represents a bearish period in the marketplace. During the trading session, the price of the stock was up and down in a wide range and it opened near the high and closed near the low of the day.

By representing a bullish period, the 'long white body', or 'long white line'-(in the EBAY chart below, the white is actually gray because of the white background) is the exact opposite of the long black line. Prices
were all over the map during the day, but the stock opened near the low of the day and closed near the high.

'Spinning tops' are very small bodies and can be either black or white. This pattern shows a very tight trading range between the open and the close, and it is considered somewhat neutral.

'Doji lines' illustrate periods in which the opening and closing prices for the period are very close or exactly the same.

You will also notice that, when you start to look deep into candlestick patterns, the length of the shadows can vary.