Chart & Trading Fundamentals

Anatomy of a Stock Chart

Step 1 of 7 · Line charts vs candlesticks0 pts
A price chart is a record of an argument. Every bar is the outcome of buyers and sellers disagreeing, and its shape tells you how that went. A line chart connects one price per period, almost always the close. It is the clearest way to see direction over a long span — which is why the challenge charts in this app use one.
$100$105$110Time (trading days) → · same data as the candle chart belowPrice ($)
Line chart: one point per period, connecting closing prices. Vertical axis price in dollars, horizontal axis time in trading days.
What it throws away is what happened inside each period. The same thirty sessions as show that some swung hard in both directions before settling.
$100$105$110Time (trading days) →Price ($)
Candlestick chart of identical data. Each candle encodes four prices instead of one. Hollow/green = closed up, filled/red = closed down.
Which to use when
Use a line chart to see the shape of a move over months or years. Use candles when the behaviour inside each period matters — which is most short-horizon work. Everything in this lesson is drawn on illustrative data so the features are clean. Real charts are messier.

Quick check

Answer to see the explanation — a wrong answer never blocks you.

A candlestick is coloured green (hollow). This tells you that: