Another Newbie Question - Candlesticks

Ok, when I hover over a candlestick it tells me the open, close etc

Whats confusing me is, is each one showing and open and close, so does the market Im watching keep opening and closing?

Possibly worded that badly, but I dont know who to explain what I mean, so hopefully someone gets me.

Thanks, as always

Hi @Jinkster

Each candle is showing you the Open, High, Low and Close of that particular candle. For example on a 5-minute chart, it would be the OHLC of that 5-minute interval.

In forex, trading continues from the start of the business day on Monday morning in Asia / Australia/ New Zealand until the end of the business day in New York on Friday each week. So the only dependable daily open and close prices each week are the open on Monday and the close on Friday.

You would have to consult your chart provider to find out what times they regard as the open and the close in the time zone where you are. And this is where it gets complicated but this is important if you trade off daily charts. For example, I have charts from my spread-bet company and charts from a market data and TA provider called Sharescope. The SB company use an open and close at 2230 London time: 2230 is just the time it suits them to update their data to customers. Unfortunately, this means that every daily bar on their charts is dated 1 day earlier than it really is, so today’s bar is dated 27 July, although today is 28 July, because the bar “opened” at 2230 last night. Grrrr.

I update my Sharescope data each evening after the London Stock Exchange has closed. In the early evening, their forex daily charts show the closing price as at 1630 London time, the time when the LSE closes. However, if I get a download later in the evening, they use the forex closing prices as at the time when the NY Stock Exchange closes. So their first edition of the chart changes during the evening. Usually this makes no difference to a strategy as most forex trading is done through London, but sometimes it can mean a change in the low or high and almost always the closing price.

But to really be sure, you must ask your chart provider what are their reference times.

No, the market opens and closes only once a week, and between those times is open permanently for all 120 hours.

The big thing to understand about clearly about candles is that you (or your software anyway) are defining the “opens” and “closes” of each candle, and the chart will present itself to you as you’ve instructed. In other words, apart from the weekly open and close of the market (on Monday morning and Friday evening) any other “opens” and “closes” are user-defined and don’t relate to any “objective reality” at all.

You can define the “opens” and “closes” on your own chart to occur every one minute, every 24 hours, or whatever else you want in-between.

It’s fine to ask questions like this, but what this and some of your other questions show is that you’d really benefit from carefully studying the School pages here. Learn Forex Trading at School of Pipsology - BabyPips.com :slight_smile:

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Thank you all, much appreciated.

I am doing the course. But when I get a question I try and ask it to get it in my head.

By the way, did you complete already BabyPips School? I am sure, you’ll get so many basic information’s in here from technical to fundamental.

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I was also going to ask him the same, did you learn from babypips school or not? There is a better explanation of each candle sticks and its pattern. You should start from school section of the website.