How to read a chart: candles and time

6 min read · What one candle shows, what a timeframe is and what volume means.

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Short version for experts: tables, lists and screenshots only.

Words in this lesson (5)

Long — Buying in the hope that the price will rise. Buy lower, sell higher.

Short — Selling in the hope that the price will fall: you sell something borrowed, then buy it back cheaper. You make money when the price drops.

Volume — How much money or how many units changed hands over a period. A move on high volume is more reliable than one on low volume.

Timeframe — What stretch of time one candle on the chart shows: a minute, an hour, a day.

Candle — A bar on the chart for one stretch of time: where the price opened, where it closed, its high and its low.

A chart is the history of the price

Time runs horizontally, price runs vertically. The line goes up — the price was rising; down — it was falling.

But in trading we usually draw candles, not a line. A candle tells you more.

One candle — four prices

Each candle shows what happened to the price over one stretch of time (for example, an hour):

where the price was at the start of the hour (the open);
where it was at the end (the close);
how high it went;
how low it went.

Part of the candle	What it means
The thick part (body)	the distance between the open and the close
The thin lines above and below (wicks)	the high and the low over that time
Green candle	the price rose over that time
Red candle	the price fell over that time

A long body — the price moved confidently in one direction. A long wick — the price went there and came back: it wasn't accepted there.

Timeframe

A timeframe is how much time fits into one candle. On the MAMAY chart there are buttons at the top: 1M, 5M, 15M, 1H, 4H, 1D — one minute, five minutes, fifteen minutes, an hour, four hours, a day.

Timeframe	What you see
1D (day)	the big picture over months: where the market is heading
1H (hour)	the picture of the last few days
5M (five minutes)	what's happening right now

The rule: look at the higher timeframe first, then the lower one. On five-minute candles any move looks huge. On the daily chart it may turn out to be a small ripple.

Volume

Below the chart are volume bars: how much was bought and sold during each candle.

The price rises on high volume — a lot of money is behind the move, you can trust it.
The price rises on low volume — the move is weak and can easily reverse.

Try it yourself

Open the "Terminal" tab.
Click 1D — see where the price went over the last few months.
Click 1H, then 5M — notice how the same move looks different.

↗ Open "Terminal" in MAMAY ▶ Next: long, short and orders

This is how it looks in MAMAY: “Terminal”