How to Read a Single Candle

beginner6 min read

Body, wick, colour — one candle already tells you who won the battle that period.

Before any multi-candle pattern, you must read one candle fluently. Every candle summarises a single period (a day, an hour, a minute) using four prices — Open, High, Low, Close — and three visual parts.

The body — the thick rectangle between the open and close. A green/hollow body means it closed above its open (buyers won); a red/filled body means it closed below (sellers won).
The wicks (shadows) — the thin lines above and below the body, marking the highest and lowest prices reached during the period.
Colour & size — a long body = decisive, one-sided movement; a small body = indecision; long wicks = a price was rejected after being pushed there.

A single candle is a tiny battle report between buyers and sellers. The body shows who won and by how much; the wicks show the failed attacks — prices one side pushed to but couldn’t hold. A long lower wick says “sellers shoved it down, but buyers slammed it back up” — rejection of lower prices. Read body + wicks together and one candle already tells you the balance of power.

ExampleA candle with a tiny body near the top and a long lower wick: price fell hard during the period but buyers fought it all the way back to near the open. That long lower wick is a footprint of buyers defending a level — often more telling than the close itself.

Key takeawayOne candle = a period’s battle: the body (open-to-close) shows who won and how decisively; the wicks show rejected extremes. Long bodies mean conviction, small bodies mean indecision, long wicks mean rejection.

FAQs

Do candle colours always mean green-up, red-down?

Green/red (or hollow/filled) refers to close *vs the open of the same candle*, not vs the previous candle. A green candle closed above where it opened — even if the whole candle is lower than yesterday’s. Don’t confuse a candle’s own colour with the day-over-day change.