Japanese Candlesticks are the oldest form of technical analysis. It is a system that has been used since the 1700s to trade. In the beginning, it was used to trade and analyze rice trading. Over the centuries it has become used for many other analyses including but not limited to securities, options, and Forex.

Candlestick charts show a trend just like any other chart but with more detail. They use a value system of open, high, low and close. There are 2 basic parts to a candlestick; the body, that is a rectangle shape either filled or hollow, and the shadows that are simply lines above and below the body.

A high is marked by the top of the upper shadow or a wick. It indicates the highest point of the day in trading. The low is marked by the bottom of the lower shadow. If a security closes higher than it opened, then a hollow body is drawn. The top line of the body itself would indicate the close and the bottom line of the body would indicate the open. If a security closes lower than the opening price, then a filled body is drawn with the top line indicating the opening and the lower one indicating the close. (See below.)

Candlestick charts are considered more eye appealing and easier to understand than the ordinary bar or line chart. They are more intuitive and easier to identify immediately, and they also show price action relative to the past. (Best left for another article.)

Different body sizes represent the distance between open and close. A longer hallow body represents a nice bullish candlestick where the close is higher than the open. A longer filled or black body represents a nice bearish session / day where the close is much lower than the open. In the flip side short bodies represent a close and open relatively close to each other.

Another characteristic would be a hollow or filled body with no shadows. These are called Marubozu or black & white. A white Marubozu would occur when the open equals the low and the close equals the high. A black Marubozu would occur when the open equals the high and the close equals the low.

A long or short shadow with a short body are called spinning tops. Spinning tops represent indecision. The short body indicates that there was little change in the trading and the long shadows indicate there was a lot of activity with both bulls and bears. However it also indicates that neither buyer nor seller could get the upper hand, resulting in somewhat of a standoff.