Candlestick Chart
Candle chart · Japanese candlesticks · OHLC chart · K-line chart · Klines
A price chart that draws each time period as one candle showing its open, high, low and close prices.
Simple explanation
Background: Korean charts colour rising candles red and falling candles blue, the reverse of the green-up, red-down default on many Western charts and on global exchanges such as Binance. On a Korean screen, red means up.
Each candle covers a fixed period, such as one minute, one hour or one day. It shows the first trade of the period (open), the highest price (high), the lowest (low) and the last trade (close). The thick part between open and close is the body; the thin lines reaching up to the high and down to the low are the wicks, or shadows. A candle that closes above its open is a rising candle (양봉 in Korean), one that closes below is a falling candle (음봉), and one whose open and close are almost equal, so the body is a thin line, is a doji. The initials of the four prices give the other name, OHLC.
Colours depend on where you are. Korean exchanges and brokers draw rises in red and falls in blue. Many US and European charts and global exchanges such as Binance default to the opposite, green for up and red for down. Someone used to Korean charts can easily read a red candle on a foreign chart as a rise, and the other way round, so on an unfamiliar chart check the open and close numbers before trusting the colour. Some platforms let you switch the colours, and the volume bars under the candles usually follow the same scheme.
The same price action looks completely different depending on the candle period. Upbit's public market data (API) offers second candles, 1, 3, 5, 10, 15, 30, 60 and 240-minute candles, and day, week, month and year candles. A day with a crash and an almost full recovery shows up on the daily chart as one candle with a long lower wick, while on one-minute candles it unfolds as hundreds of candles. Because a candle keeps only four prices, one candle cannot tell you whether the high came before the low or after it.
When "today's" candle starts also differs by exchange. Upbit's daily candle starts at 0:00 UTC, which is 9 a.m. in Korea, and Upbit's change "versus the previous day" is measured against the previous day's close at that hour. So the change on Upbit's screen is the move since 9 a.m. Korean time, not the move over the last 24 hours. Binance's public API also splits candles on UTC by default. With different cut-off times, the same coin on the same day shows a different daily open and a different daily change.
Candlestick charts are popularly credited to Munehisa Homma, an 18th-century Japanese rice trader. Steve Nison, whose 1991 book brought them to Western traders, thought it unlikely that Homma used candle charts and believed they were more likely developed in the early Meiji period, in the late 1800s. Chart reading (technical analysis) gives candle shapes names such as hammer, engulfing and doji and tries to guess the next move from them, but the price can rise or fall after any shape, so none of them is a guaranteed signal.
On thinly traded coins, or right after a listing, a handful of orders can draw a long wick: one big market order on a thin order book pushes the price several ticks and it snaps back. A wick on a coin with tiny trading value often shows one or two fills rather than the mood of the market. And trading back and forth among the same person or group to make candles and volume look busy can count as market manipulation under Korea's Virtual Asset User Protection Act.
The same coin's won candles on Upbit and USDT candles on Binance never look quite the same: Binance's price times the won-dollar rate, compared with Upbit's price, is the kimchi premium. On a day when only the Korean market spikes, Upbit's candle grows a long upper wick while Binance's stays calm, and at that moment the premium has blown wide open. When you read a foreign chart, remember that the colours, the price unit (dollars) and the daily cut-off time may all differ.
On CoinGaja, each coin's page (for example /premium/BTC) shows its price on the four Korean exchanges and on Binance, the premium on each exchange, and a price chart. The price tables work out Upbit's 24-hour change from Upbit's one-minute candles, using the price exactly 24 hours earlier, so it can differ from the 9 a.m.-based change on Upbit's own screen. On the CoinGaja Kimchi Premium Index chart, the year before recording began is rebuilt from Upbit and Binance one-hour closing prices and drawn lighter. The Price and premium heatmap colours each coin's 24-hour change in shades of red for rises and blue for falls.
Example
Coin A's one-hour candle: open ₩1,000, high ₩1,080, low ₩950, close ₩1,050 (₩1,000 is about $0.71)
Close above open → a rising candle (red on Korean charts, usually green abroad); body = 1,050 − 1,000 = ₩50 (+5.00%)
Upper wick = 1,080 − 1,050 = ₩30, lower wick = 1,000 − 950 = ₩50 → low to high within the hour = 1,080 ÷ 950 − 1 = +13.68%
Next hour: open ₩1,050 → close ₩1,000 → a falling candle (blue in Korea, usually red abroad), 1,000 ÷ 1,050 − 1 = -4.76%
Binance's candle closes at $0.70 at the same moment × rate ₩1,400 = ₩980 → kimchi premium at Upbit's ₩1,000 close = 1,000 ÷ 980 − 1 = +2.04%
Upbit's daily candle starts every day at 9 a.m. Korean time (0:00 UTC) → at 11 p.m., "today's" candle holds only 14 hours of trading
※ Example numbers, for illustration only
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