Candlestick Visualizations for Financial Time Series Data

Candlestick Graphs are a traditional financial visualization for display of time based price distributions. Specifically for each time slice, they display:

• Opening Price
• Highest Price
• Lowest Price
• Closing Price

Describes price movements over time

A Candlestick Graph is a style of Bar Graph used primarily to describe price movements of a security, derivative, or currency over time. It is a combination of a Line Chart and a Bar Graph, in that each bar represents the range of price movement over a given time interval. It is most often used in technical analysis of equity and currency price patterns.

Candlesticks are usually composed of the body (black or white), and an upper and a lower shadow (wick): the area between the open and the close is called the real body, price excursions above and below the real body are called shadows. The wick illustrates the highest and lowest traded prices of a security during the time interval represented. The body illustrates the opening and closing trades. If the security closed higher than it opened, the body is white or unfilled, with the opening price at the bottom of the body and the closing price at the top. If the security closed lower than it opened, the body is black, with the opening price at the top and the closing price at the bottom. A Candlestick need not have either a body or a wick.

Candlestick Graphs are a visual aid for decision making in stock, FX, commodity, and option trading

Candlesticks also show how prices are relative to the prior periods' prices, so one can tell by looking at one bar if the price action is higher or lower than the prior one. They can be colored for even better definition and visual analysis. Rather than using the open-high-low-close for a given time period (for example, 5 minutes, 1 hour, 1 day, 1 month), Candlesticks can also be constructed using the open-high-low-close of a specified volume range (for example, 1,000; 100,000; 1 million shares per Candlestick).

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