Candlestick

A candlestick is a way of charting a stock's price that packs four numbers — the open, high, low, and close for a given time period — into a single visual shape. The "body" of the candle spans the open and close prices, typically shown in one color if the close is higher than the open (bullish) and another if it's lower (bearish). Thin lines called wicks (or shadows) extend above and below the body, marking the highest and lowest prices reached during the period even if the price didn't stay there. A candle with long wicks and a small body shows the price was pushed to an extreme and then pulled back before the close; a candle with almost no wicks shows the price moved in largely one direction with little pushback. Swing traders typically read sequences of candles together, rather than a single candle in isolation, to judge whether buying or selling pressure is building or fading.