Stocks Chart Types: Line, Candle and Bar
A Stocks Trading chart is a graphical representation of stocks price movement of a stocks instrument over a given period of time.
Drawn on a grid & the user is at liberty to choose which stocks chart time frame they want to trade with. Stocks trader may choose to use hourly charts, daily charts or even 1 minute chart timeframes.
To draw stocks charts, 3 methods are used. Methods used to draw the stock charts defines the type of stocks chart.
The three types of stocks charts are: - Candlesticks Charts - Bar Charts
- Line charts
- Bar charts
- Candles stocks charts - Most popular
Line Chart
A single line is drawn from one closing stocks price to the next, forming a continuous line.
This type of trading chart provides very little information on the chart and is therefore not very popular among stock traders. In fact this type of stocks chart is rarely ever used.
Line Chart in Stock - This type of chart leaves out important data about stocks price movement. Information such as opening, high & low point of the stocks price which are not represented on the trade graph.
This makes this type of stocks line chart to be considered sketchy by stocks technical analysts.
The stocks chart below shows example of a stocks line chart.
Bar Chart
Stock Trading Bar Charts - This type of chart shows the opening, closing, the high and the low, for a particular stocks price interval and is represented by bars that look like the ones drawn below - hence its name bar charts
- Bar Charts - bar chart has a vertical bar showing the total stocks price movement.
- Left horizontal bar the opening
- Right horizontal bar the closing
- High & low denoted by the highest and lowest point
However, these stocks bar charts are not very easy to work with, especially when they are not magnified. It becomes very hard to interpret the bar charts with ease when trading the stock market thus making them not very popular among stock traders.
A Bar chart that is not magnified makes it hard to view the opening & closing stocks price as illustrated by this example:
Candle Chart
Candlesticks Charts - This is the most widely used type of stocks charts, they resemble candles, thus their name - candlesticks charts.
Candlesticks charts shows opening, closing, the high and the low of a particular stocks price interval.
The range between the open stocks price and the close stocks price is known as the body of the candlestick.
Stocks candles charts is most popular type of stocks charts among online traders because it is easiest to interpret when trading the stock market. Stocks Trading candlestick charts also gives a lot of data about the stocks price movement. This makes candles charts the most widely used type of charting in Stocks.
Candle Sticks Charts
Shown Below is example of candlesticks charts. To learn more about stocks trading candles charts, read this topic: Technical Analysis of Japanese Candlesticks Patterns in Stocks.
How to Select These Stock Chart Types on MT4 Software
To draw any of these types of stocks charts on the MetaTrader 4 Platform a trader can use the buttons below found on this MT4 stock platform.
Drawing Stock Charts on MetaTrader 4
- To Select a Bar Chart Click the Bar Button Key
- To Select a Candlesticks Chart Click the Candlestick Button
- To Select a Line Charts - Click the Line Button Key
