Candlestick charts, made simple
Each candle is one day's story — starting with what red and blue mean.
Open a chart for the first time and the dense red and blue bars look like alien script. But each bar is actually a very friendly 'price diary.' Today, let's read just one candle properly. Read one and the rest are all the same.
One candle is one day
One candle is usually a price diary for a single day. It packs four things into one picture: the opening price, the closing price, the highest price, and the lowest price of that day.
What do red and blue mean?
In Korea, a red candle is an up day (close > open) and a blue candle is a down day (close < open). Red means it ended pricier than it started; blue means it ended cheaper than it started.
One easy trap: U.S. charts are the opposite. Green is an up day, red is a down day. The color's meaning depends on which country's chart you're viewing, so check each time.
What do the wicks tell you?
So a small body with a long upper wick is sometimes read as a signal that buying pressure surged once and then faltered. But you can't conclude much from a single candle — read several together as a flow.
How a beginner should look at it
At first, don't strain to assign meaning to every single candle. Just knowing 'red is up, blue is down, wicks are the day's swing' makes a chart far more comfortable to read.