TL;DR Every candlestick summarizes one time period (a minute, a day, a week) with four prices: where it opened, the highest, the lowest, and where it closed. Green = closed higher than it opened; red = lower.
The plain-English version
A candle has two parts. The thick body spans the open and close — the period's start and end price. The thin lines poking out (wicks) mark the highest and lowest prices touched along the way.
Green (or white) body: price closed above where it opened — buyers won that round. Red (or black): closed below — sellers won. One glance tells you the battle's result and how messy it got: a long body means conviction, long wicks mean a fight — price traveled far but got pushed back.
Change the timeframe and each candle compresses a different slice: a daily chart's candle is one day; a 5-minute chart's is five minutes. Same grammar, different zoom.
A few candles worth recognizing
- Doji — open and close nearly equal (tiny body, often long wicks): indecision, a stalemate round.
- Hammer — small body, long lower wick after a decline: sellers pushed hard, buyers dragged it back up.
- Engulfing — a candle whose body completely swallows the previous one: momentum audibly shifting.
Traders have named dozens of these (morning stars, shooting stars, three soldiers…). Learn the handful above and you can read most chart commentary.
How much of this is real?
Candles describing the past: 100% real — it's genuinely the densest way to display price action, which is why every platform defaults to it. Candles predicting the future: much shakier. Patterns reflect crowd behavior, sometimes usefully, but no candle shape reliably forecasts anything on its own — context, volume, and levels do the heavy lifting. Read candles like weather reports, not prophecies.
The common mistake
Pattern-hunting on tiny timeframes where noise generates "signals" constantly. The 1-minute chart will show you a textbook pattern every eleven minutes. The textbook does not show you the losses.
Educational only — not investment advice. Candles are the market's handwriting; forgery is common.