Advantages of candles

[geline]

What are the advantages of candles over bar charts and line charts?

[ramrocket]

Here are a few bullet points regarding candle stick advantages vs. bar charts:

1. Easy to understand:
Anyone, from the first-time chartist to the seasoned professional can easily harness the power of candle charts. This is because, the same data required to draw a bar chart (high, low, open and close) is used for a candle chart.

2. Provide earlier indications of market turns:
Candle charts can send out reversal signals in a few sessions, rather than the weeks often needed for a bar chart reversal signal. Thus, market turns with candle charts will frequently be in advance of traditional indicators. This will help you to enter and exit the market with better timing.

3. Furnish unique market insights:
Candle charts not only show the trend of the move, as does a bar chart, but, unlike bar charts, candle charts also show the force underpinning the move.

4. Enhance Western charting analysis:
Any Western technical tool you now use can also be used on a candle chart. Candle charts, however, will give you timing and trading benefits not available with bar charts. This merging of Eastern and Western analysis will give you a jump on those who use only traditional Western charting techniques.

hope this help.

[paulr57]

I found that learning the candlestick patterns gave me some insight and understanding into what I was looking at on the charts. When you get into Harami's, spinning tops, etc. and know what they could be saying you begin to get a feel for how the market behaves, the 'intuition' that millionaire traders must have.

I might be wrong, but this took me a long way towards 'reading' charts instead of watching whether the price was going up or down.

[honeb]

ramrocket pretty much said everything i would have said.

1) candlesticks are easy to follow and learn for anyone. it does provide a bit more info then other charts but its still simple to understand

2) there are so many patterns and candlestick formations that really help in early signs of a reversal. this is so powerful if you know how to use them properly.

3) you can see the trading range in that particular session.

4) lines usually only capture closes. bars only caputres highs, lows, opens and closes but candlessticks captures all these things including filling in opens and closes so that you can actually see the true direction of the candle sticks. its one thing to see a stick bouncing upwards into an obviouse trend but when you can also see all the candle sticks showing a positive color its just more prominent and easyier to stop.

when i first started trading i learned with candle sticks. even as a bigginer i found them easier to understand then a line graph.

[topgun]

I've read Steve Nison's Japanese Candlestick Charting techniques 2nd edition and it is definately one of my favorite books on using candlesticks combined with western technical analasis. I always carry it around with me just as a reference.