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In front of the chart

Questions asked with a chart open · Taiwan

Seventeen short answers about the picture itself: what each shape is, what its colour compares, why the same instrument looks unlike itself an hour later.

A price chart is a record of where a price has already been. Reading it means naming what is drawn, not guessing the shape that comes next.

What is drawn, and the word for it

Four things on the picture, named — and what none claims.
What is drawn The word for it What it does not claim
A block with a thin line above and below A candle: the block holds where a slice opened and closed, the lines how far it reached That the next block resembles it
The colour of the block Green: the slice ended higher than it started. Red: lower Good news, bad news, or a reason to click
Figures down one edge The price side; where the price stands is marked at the right edge That round figures matter more than others
Marks along the bottom Time. Their spacing is the timeframe: a minute, an hour or a day per block That a wider slice is a truer one

Definitions sit on the word list; the slower walk is on reading a chart.

Questions about the shapes

Why is the price drawn as blocks instead of one plain line?

Because a block carries four figures at once: where its slice opened, where it closed, and how far the price travelled up and down inside it. A line holds one.

What are the thin lines sticking out of a block?

The far edges of that slice: the top and the bottom the price touched. The block shows only the opening and closing figures.

My candle changed colour while I was watching it. Why?

Colour compares the end of a slice with its beginning. While the slice runs, its end is wherever the price is now, so the colour flips as the price crosses back over the opening figure.

Does green mean something good has happened?

It means the price finished that slice above where it began. That is the whole meaning — nothing about the news behind the move, nothing about the block still forming.

One block is enormous, the next has almost no body. Does size mean importance?

Size is distance, not importance: a tall block means the price covered ground inside its slice, a thin one that it wandered and finished near where it opened.

What is the empty stretch where no blocks are drawn?

A gap. Nothing traded across it, so the picture has nothing to draw and skips to where trading resumed.

Someone called a group of candles a pattern. Does the name change what comes next?

It does not. A pattern describes shapes that already appeared. Nobody can tell the next move for certain, and anyone selling that certainty is selling nothing.

What are the coloured lines somebody drew over my chart?

Indicators: arithmetic performed on the same prices and laid on top. Worth ignoring while the basic shapes are still new.

Questions about time, scale and the edges

Why does the same instrument look like a different market on two charts?

Because the timeframe — how much time one block covers — is set differently. The prices underneath are identical; only the slice size changed, and the drawing with it.

Which of the two versions is the real one?

Both. A one-minute chart chops a day into small busy blocks; a one-day chart folds it into one. Short slices look jumpy, long ones calm; neither is nearer the truth.

How do I tell which timeframe I am looking at?

By the marks along the bottom: their spacing is the answer. If they step forward an hour at a time, one block covers an hour; if a day, then a day.

Why is the figure at the right edge never a round number?

It is not a chosen mark, it is the price as it stands. Prices move in steps far finer than the round figures above and below it — one such step is called a pip.

The last block keeps moving and will not settle. Is something broken?

Nothing is broken — that slice of time has not finished. Until it does, its closing figure, its top, its bottom and its colour can all still change.

Everything shifted when I zoomed. Did the prices change?

They did not. Zooming changes how much of the record fits on screen and how steep a movement looks. Calm and dramatic pictures can hold identical figures.

The chart draws one price, but I was told there are two. Which is drawn?

A single line cannot show both. There is a price to buy at and one to sell at; the small gap between them, the spread, is the main cost of a trade, paid by opening one.

Is the picture on a practice account drawn from the same prices?

Yes — the same prices, drawn the same way. The picture cannot show which kind of account sits behind it; the difference is in the person watching, which is why demo results don't guarantee real-account results.

Does looking at a chart cost anything, and where do I ask about a shape?

A demo account is free and uses virtual money with no time limit, so nothing is deposited while you watch; Exness Terminal opens a chart in a browser. Unfamiliar shapes go to the question page.

What the picture never says

  • It faces backwards. Every shape on screen has finished. No arrangement of them makes the next one certain — not from a chart, and not from a confident stranger online.
  • Naming is not skill. Knowing a shape is called a candle says nothing about whether a trade is sensible. Many people lose money when they start trading, usually by rushing.
  • The stake is not drawn. Nothing shows how much of a balance one trade puts at stake; that figure is chosen by the person clicking, on risk basics.
  • The floor is zero. Negative Balance Protection keeps an account from falling below zero — and everything deposited can still be lost.

Where to look next

Reading a chart

The same picture explained slowly, shape by shape, from the first candle.

Open the guide

Demo account

Where a live chart can be watched with virtual money and no time limit.

See the practice side

Start here

The beginner path in order, for readers who reached a chart before the basics.

See the path

Open a live chart and name what is on it

A free demo account at Exness draws the same prices with virtual money and no time limit. Open one instrument, switch the timeframe once, describe what changed.

Open a free demo at Exness