Price charts are the mother of technical trading. There are many different variations of charts but there are only three popular enough for everyone to mention. These are: line charts, bar charts and candlestick charts.

I will give you a brief description of line and bar charts here but will dedicate a separate page for candlestick charts.

Line charts -

Are very simple and appear only as a line. They only show one price point of the currency over a specific period of time. See fig.

Bar charts -

It’s said that these are the most popular charts that traders use. This calculation probably accounts for all traders in all markets — this of course is according to me as I think that bar charts are only second to candlestick charts. No offenses to you bar traders.

Anyway, bar charts display price data in vertical lines and show the highs and lows for the currency for the interval selected.
The tip at the top of the vertical line is the high for that interval (highest price for the hour, day, month — whatever interval selected) and the tip at the bottom of the line is the low for that interval (lowest price for that interval). The two small horizontal lines (see open/close) show the opening and closing price for the specified interval. These two horizontal lines are called ticks. See fig.

NOTE: opening ticks are always on the left side of the vertical lines and closing ticks are always on the right side of the vertical line but the higher and lower positions can change based on if the price movements from the opening.

Candlestick charts -

I only use these kinds of charts so I’ll dedicate a separate page — continue here.