Why are there gaps in candlesticks?

Beginner Questions
1

i’m trying to understand candlestick graphs, but i cant seem to understand why there are gaps. according to my understanding, the candlestick starts at the open, and ends at the close. so eg, a 5 min candlestick opens at 1.0000 and closes 5 mins later at 1.0003. what i dont understand is how the next candlestick can open at a very different price?

if the forex market had proper trading hours, i can understand if the open price is different because overnight the demand can change; but forex is supposed to be ‘seamless’?

thanks in advance!

2

Because the 5M chart, or any M, H, etc chart is not the real time market movement. The market moves in ticks, so a new 5M candle may open after a couple more ticks have happened. Ticks do not equal time frames; You may have a different amount of ticks for every 5 minute candle. The opening of the candle after the gap represents the price at the opening of the candle.

3

Don’t much concern about the gap of the candle. When there is a gap , i can said fast move will occur. so get ready for the move . The most importent once candle open then next the candle will close. If 1 bar candle close at 5 min chart , you can measure the lenght , how many pip the move to enter trade on 1 min chart for scalping. If engulfing at 5 min chart , then most probarary one engulfing bar at 5 min chart can forward to 10 pips movement on the next move or more , determine by next candle from the 5 min chart.

4

thanks for the replies. edacsac, yours made more sense to me. so does the ‘tick lag’ happen equally for all brokers/candlestick charts? is there a specific number of uncounted ticks?

on a daily chart, X closes at 1.5000 and the next day the candlestick opens ## ticks later. but since its a seamless market would it be right to say that the ## ticks cant jump fast enough and drastically enough to make a significant gap?

does this mean that patterns like the harami doji occur less often? (by virtue of the fact that in the ## ticks the price has to jump to the midpoint of the previous day’s candlestick body)

my trading platform more or less closes and opens the next candle almost immediately. i still kind of am at a loss about this subject :slight_smile: please help!