Last Updated: October 26, 2026
A chart records prices and reported activity for a chosen market and interval. It does not reveal who traded, what they intended or what happens next. Start by identifying the exchange, pair, spot or derivative contract, timezone and candle type. Two screens labelled BTC can represent different data.
Read one candle, then check what it leaves out
For a standard time-based candle, O is the opening price, H the highest, L the lowest and C the closing price. The body joins open and close; the wick reaches the extremes. Check the platform's color setting rather than assuming green always compares close with open. TradingView's candle documentation describes that distinction.
The drawing uses invented prices in quote-currency units. It is a teaching example, not a recorded token or a trade recommendation.
The hourly candle opens at 100, reaches 108 and 96, and closes at 101. Its close is 1% above its open; its full range is 12 units. Neither fact means buyers controlled the entire hour. The candle alone does not tell you whether the high or the low happened first.
The same observations on two timeframes
Scroll sideways to see every column. Keyboard: focus the table region and use the arrow keys.
| 15-minute bar | Open | High | Low | Close | Reported volume, units |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 100 | 104 | 98 | 103 | 12 |
| 2 | 103 | 108 | 101 | 107 | 18 |
| 3 | 107 | 107 | 99 | 100 | 24 |
| 4 | 100 | 102 | 96 | 101 | 16 |
| Combined hour | 100 | 108 | 96 | 101 | 70 |
The hourly open is the first open, its close the last close, and its high and low the extremes of the four bars. Volume sums to 70 when the rows use the same venue, instrument and units. The hourly green body hides the large fall in bar 3. The smaller bars reveal that sequence, but still not every trade within each bar.
Changing timeframe aggregates information; it does not make one view the truth and the other noise. Align the clock boundaries before comparing them. A still-open candle can change until the interval ends. Do not compare its provisional value with a historical strategy that only used completed candles. See how intervals work.
Separate observations from hypotheses
Scroll sideways to see every column. Keyboard: focus the table region and use the arrow keys.
| You can observe | Possible explanation | What remains unknown |
|---|---|---|
| A price repeatedly traded near a marked level | Participants may react near that area | Whether it will hold on the next visit |
| Price and reported volume both fell | Activity declined on that feed | Whether this is a pause or a persistent decline |
| A wick passed a previous low | Trades occurred below that low | Whether anyone deliberately targeted stops |
| Price rose while an oscillator weakened | The indicator's calculation changed differently from price | Whether a reversal follows, after costs |
Support and resistance are chosen regions for study, not floors or ceilings. Mark them before seeing the next outcome. A level drawn at the eventual low is not evidence that you could have selected it beforehand.
Reported volume has a scope: base units, quote value or contract count; one venue or an aggregate. Wash trades, missing feeds and incompatible units can distort comparisons. A large bar does not identify an institution. Several indicators derived from the same closes are not independent witnesses.
A practice record that can be checked
Hide the next bars. Save the market, timezone, interval, completed-bar timestamp and unedited screenshot. Write one observation, two possible explanations and the future observation that would weaken each explanation. Reveal the next bars only afterward, and preserve mistakes as well as successes.
For the synthetic hour, a defensible entry is: "Close 101 versus open 100; range 96–108. The close alone hides the drop from 107 to 100 in bar 3." An unjustified entry is: "Institutions absorbed the sell-off, so the next hour must rise."
Chart literacy is different from proving a trading rule. Testing a rule also requires fixed entry and exit definitions, untouched evaluation data, complete costs and all trials rather than selected examples. No number of practice hours or one-month paper record guarantees an edge.
Affiliate disclosure: AITR may earn commissions from linked services elsewhere on the site. No paid charting plan is required for this exercise. Trading can lose capital; this educational example is not financial advice.