Reading a Candlestick
The single building block every chart on this site (and every pattern on this track) is actually made of.
Every candle on an InsiderWolf chart represents one trading period (one day, by default) and encodes four numbers at once: where price opened, where it closed, and the highest and lowest points it touched in between. The thick part — the body — spans the distance between the open and the close. The thin lines above and below it — the wicks (or shadows) — show how far price traveled beyond that range before settling back.
Color does one job: it tells you which direction that period moved. A green body means the close was higher than the open (price rose that period); a red body means the close was lower than the open (price fell). This is the exact same convention used throughout every ticker page on this site.
- The body tells you where price opened and closed; the wicks tell you how far it traveled beyond that range during the period — a long wick means a lot happened that didn't "stick."
- A long upper wick with a small body (like the last candle above) is often read as sellers showing up and rejecting higher prices before the close — the opposite is true for a long lower wick.
- A single candle is just a snapshot of one period — every pattern discussed elsewhere on this track is really just a specific sequence of candles, read together.