What is Candlestick?

A chart unit showing open, high, low and close for one period — the body shows the result, the wicks show the battle.

A candlestick summarises all trading in one time period using four prices: open, high, low and close. The thick body spans open to close — typically green or white when price closed higher, red or black when it closed lower — while the thin wicks above and below mark the extremes reached during the period. One glance shows not just where price ended but how it got there: a big body with tiny wicks means one side dominated; long wicks mean a fight in which the extreme was rejected.

Candlesticks are the alphabet of price action, and like an alphabet they mean little in isolation. A bullish engulfing candle printed at a swept low inside a demand zone is a story; the identical candle in the middle of a range is noise. This is why we teach candles as the final confirmation layer, read on top of structure, liquidity and zones, rather than as standalone signals to memorise from a pattern cheat-sheet. Learn to read what each candle says about the fight between buyers and sellers, then insist on hearing that message in a location that matters.