Change over time

Candlestick chart

Shows opening and closing values as a body and period extremes as wicks.

Chart
Price movement
Trend over time

What it answers

How did price move within each period?

Shape: Bodies with upper and lower wicks
What it shows: Direction and within-period range.

Example

The question

How did the share price move each day this month?

Daily share price, March (candlestick)

One candle per trading day: body from open to close, cyan when the price rose and pink when it fell, wicks to the day’s high and low. The price moves from 100 to 119.6.

Illustrative data. It belongs to no company.

When to use it

Use it when

Financial or other period measurements with OHLC values.

Avoid it when

When body colours are unexplained or data are not genuine period ranges.

How to read it

Read the body for open/close and wicks for high/low.

Note

High and low must enclose open and close.

The data you need

Layout: Wide OHLC table
Fields: Time: date/datetime; Open,High,Low,Close: numbers
One row is: One complete trading or measurement period. What is the grain?
Rules: Require Low <= min(Open,Close) and max(Open,Close) <= High. Sort by time.
Optional: Optional Volume. Define trading calendar and adjusted versus unadjusted prices.
Preparation: Aggregate genuine observations into ordered periods using open/close order and period high/low; align volume and adjusted-price conventions.
Units: Price uses currency per instrument/unit; volume uses traded units. Define period length; price changes and returns have different units.

A wide table: one row per item, with a separate column for each measure or period.

Worked example

Open 100, high 110, low 95, close 105. Body spans 100-105; wicks span 95-110. The close is 5 above the open.

Time	Open	High	Low	Close
2026-01-01	100	110	95	105
2026-01-02	105	112	101	108

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