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It's in the way that you use them.
Source: Barchart.com; Photo composite Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Line, bar, and candlesticks—these are the three most common technical analysis chart types. Think of them as vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry ice cream flavors. A line chart gives you that plain vanilla overview; a bar chart adds a bit of richness; and candlesticks add a pop of color.
Which price chart should you use? It depends on your tastes and preferences, plus the specific type of information you’re trying to glean from a chart.
Key Points
- Line charts can be helpful for getting an overall view of price action, comparing investments, and analyzing economic indicators.
- Bar charts show you the price range as well as the opening and closing price for a specific period.
- Candlestick charts can be helpful for shorter-term analysis of investments.
Why use charts when analyzing stock prices?
When making investment decisions, it helps to analyze a stock, stock index, or exchange-traded fund (ETF) relative to its past price action. And one way to do that is to use price charts. But making sense of charts can take some getting used to. It’s not always clear which type you should use, how far back you should look, and what patterns you should be watching for.
It all depends on what questions you’re trying to answer when looking at a price chart, such as:
- What direction is the price moving today versus the longer term?
- Is the price moving in an up or down trend, or within a range?
- Is it moving slowly or is it volatile, whipsawing up and down?
Knowing these factors will give you an idea of how much further price could move. In other words, price charts can help you determine if an investment is worth the risk.
Chart reading skills take time to develop. A good starting point is to familiarize yourself with each of the three technical analysis chart types: line, bar, and candlestick.
Line charts: The high-level view
Line charts may be helpful when you’re looking for a high-level glance at a market or want to see the general trend of a security (or any set of data points). Line charts generally connect single data points over a specific time (see figure 1). Line charts can also be helpful when you want to compare two or more securities or indexes. Line charts are often used to analyze economic indicators such as housing starts, employment trends, or consumer prices. Economic data doesn’t have open, high, and low data, so line charts work best.
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Figure 1: LINE CHARTS FOR THE BIG PICTURE. Line charts can be used to identify overall trends in the markets, compare investments, and analyze economic indicators.
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A line chart is a simple depiction of price action. You can quickly identify if something is moving up, down, or sideways. Line charts are great for getting an overview, but if you want to get more granular, you may want to consider bar and candlestick charts.
Bar charts: A more detailed view
A bar chart displays each period’s open, high, low, and close (OHLC) in one vertical bar. So, on a daily chart, each vertical bar represents the price action for one day; on a weekly chart, each bar represents a week; and on a monthly chart, each bar represents a month.
The highest point of each bar represents the highest price that was traded during the period. The lowest point of the bar shows the lowest price that was traded. The short horizontal line to the left represents the opening price of the specific period. The short horizontal line to the right marks the closing price.
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Figure 2: ANATOMY OF A BAR. Each bar of a bar chart represents one period (one day in a daily chart, one hour in an hourly chart, etc.). It indicates the price at the period's open and close (left and right hashes), as well as the high and low prices of the period (top and bottom of the bar). Bar charts display open, high, low, and close (OHLC).
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
A bar chart may look busier than a line chart, but you can get a better idea of where the high and low prices are relative to the open or close. They can be helpful for analyzing longer-term price movements. For example, the bar chart in figure 3 goes back three years.
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Figure 3: BAR CHART IN ACTION. Bar charts can be helpful when looking at longer-term trends that go back three or more years. If you opt to display the up bars as green and down bars as red, it's easier to spot general trends and areas where there may be more buying or selling.
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When looking at a longer-term chart, you don’t want to get bogged down with too many details. If you set the display so the up bars (when the close is higher than the open) are green and the down bars (when the close is lower than the open) are red, you can quickly see the general price trend. You can also see how long the range is (the difference between the highest and lowest point on the vertical bars), where the opening and closing prices are with respect to the highs and lows, and the open and close with respect to each other. It gives you an idea of whether there was more buying or selling.
Some investors prefer to use bar charts for all their price analysis. Others prefer to get an even more detailed view of shorter-term price action with candlesticks.
Candlestick charts: A more microscopic view
Candlestick charts show the open, high, low, and close just like bar charts. The difference is in the area between the open and close, which is referred to as the “real body” or simply “body.” The body is usually white or green if the close is higher than the open, and black or red if the close is lower than the open. (If there’s no difference between the open and close, the body is a simple horizontal line.) The lines above and below the body of the candle are known as the shadow or “wick.”
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Figure 4: CANDLES AND WICKS. The high and low of the period are defined by the tips of the wicks (“shadows”). The open and close of the period are defined by the body, and color coded by whether the closing price is higher or lower than the opening price.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
The relationship between the open and close can offer insight into whether the overall sentiment for a security or index is bullish, bearish, or neutral. For example, a long green or white candlestick indicates that sentiment is bullish. A long red or black candlestick suggests bearish sentiment. A short body represents indecision. You can see these different scenarios play out in figure 5.
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Figure 5: DO CANDLESTICKS LIGHT YOUR FIRE? Candlestick charts make it easy to see whether price went higher or lower during each period, and by how much.
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Candlestick charts can indicate how bullish or bearish investors are. Investors often use candlestick charts to identify trend reversals so they can decide when to buy or sell. Sometimes, a combination of candlesticks develops into a specific pattern that can offer additional confirmation.
The bottom line
Now that you know the technical analysis chart types, think of ways you can use all three for your chart analysis. Maybe you want to use line charts for a high-level view of economic indicators, then look at bar charts for longer-term analysis of specific investments. Then you might look at a shorter-term candlestick chart for securities you’d consider adding to your investment portfolio.
