TradingView charts

A trading chart has two axes: the horizontal x axis, which indicates time, and the vertical y axis which indicates price. So at a glance, you can see a market’s price history for the duration of the chart. However, there are different types of chart that display this price history in different ways.

Each will break down trading activity into individual periods – which could be as short as a minute, or as long as month. The simplest chart type, a line chart, will tell you the market’s price at the close of each of these periods. You’ll get a broad idea of movement, but you won’t know what happened within a specific period.

The most popular type of chart is a candlestick chart, which uses ‘candlesticks’ to tell you the market’s high, low, open and closing prices within the period.

A candlestick has two parts. The first is a solid body that’s either red (if the market fell during the period) or green (if it rose) – this tells you the period’s open and close prices. The second is a thin line coming out of the top and bottom of the body. This is called the wick, and tells you the market’s highest and lowest points in the period.

Learn more about how to read charts.