Foundations 1 / 5
Foundations · Level 0Lesson 1 of 4

Candlesticks and timeframes: how to read a price chart

Almost every crypto chart is drawn with candles. One candle is four prices and a volume for a fixed stretch of time — and the stretch you pick changes what you see.

You will learn
  • What the body, the wicks and the colour of a candle mean
  • How a candle is built from the trades inside it
  • What changes when you switch timeframes — and what does not

Before you start: Nothing — this is the first lesson.

Four prices and a volume

A candle covers a fixed stretch of time — a minute, an hour, a day — and records four prices from the trades inside it:

  • Open — the price of the first trade;
  • High — the highest price traded;
  • Low — the lowest price traded;
  • Close — the price of the last trade.

The thick part, the body, runs from the open to the close. The thin lines above and below it, the wicks (or shadows), reach to the high and the low. The body is green when the close is above the open, red when it is below. Under the candles, a bar shows the volume: how much was traded in that time — on a BTC/USDT chart, in BTC.

Build a candle — the hour from 14:00 UTC on 2 October 2026 on Binance's BTC/USDT, from its 60 one-minute candles. The hour opened at 86,565, reached its high of 86,838 at 14:05, fell hardest at 14:34 (from 86,054 to 85,692, on 153 BTC), made its low of 85,394 at 14:55 and closed at 85,687. Open, high, low, close and the volume of 2,161 BTC are exactly what the 60 minutes add up to.

A candle hides the order of events

A candle says where price started, where it ended, and how far it went — not the order. The hourly candle above shows a high and a low, but not that the high came first, at 14:05, and the low near the end. A long lower wick means price went down and came back during the candle; it does not say when, or how many times.

Timeframes

The timeframe is the time each candle covers. The same market can be drawn on 1-minute, 15-minute, hourly, 4-hour, daily or weekly candles — the trades are the same, only grouped differently.

Timeframes — the hour from 14:00 UTC on 2 October 2026 on five timeframes: 60 candles on the 1-minute chart, 4 on the 15-minute chart, one red candle on the hourly chart, a quarter of one candle on the 4-hour chart, and a twenty-fourth of one candle on the daily chart.

Short timeframes show every twist and a lot of noise; long timeframes show the larger move and hide the details. Neither is more "true" — they answer different questions. Many traders read a long timeframe for the direction and a short one for the timing; the "Your plan" module returns to that.

Check yourself · 1 of 3A 1-hour candle is red with a long lower wick. What happened in that hour?
Show the answer

Red: close below open. The lower wick: the lowest trade was well under the body. When it happened, the candle cannot say.

Check yourself · 2 of 3How is a 1-hour candle's high related to the minutes inside it?
Show the answer

Open = the first minute's open, high = the highest high, low = the lowest low, close = the last minute's close.

Check yourself · 3 of 3On which timeframe is a 30-minute dip easiest to see?
Show the answer

On a daily chart a 30-minute dip is only part of one candle's wick.

Takeaways
  1. A candle: open, high, low, close and volume of one stretch of time.
  2. Body from open to close; wicks to the high and low; green up, red down.
  3. Longer candles are built exactly from shorter ones.
  4. A candle hides the order of what happened inside it.
  5. Timeframes group the same trades differently: short for detail, long for the big picture.

Open BTC in the terminal — switch timeframes with the buttons above the chart

Further reading

Education only, not financial advice · Updated 28 Oct 2026 · Data: Binance · Report a mistake