Changing the chart
Chart types, and why analysis needs candles specifically.
Set up a working chart once and stop coming back to it.
Step 1 of 2
High — the high of the period
Every candle is four prices: open, high, low, close.
The platform usually offers several display types: line, area and candles. The choice is not cosmetic — how much information you see depends on it.
- Line
- — One number per period — the closing price
- Area
- — The same line with a fill
- Candles
- — Four numbers per period: open, high, low, close
A line chart hides the fight inside the period. You cannot see whether price reached a level and was pushed away from it — and those traces carry the most information for a short trade.
So the setup is done once: candles, a working timeframe of M1 or M5, nothing extra on screen. After that only the timeframe changes, and only deliberately.
LEVEL 05 is given over entirely to candles. If they look like meaningless rectangles right now, that is fine: for the moment it is enough to see there is more information in them than in a line.
Key takeaways
- A candle holds four prices, a line holds one.
- Long wicks are visible only on a candle chart.
- The setup is done once: candles, a working timeframe, a clean screen.
A note from Leon Mercer Academy
After setting up, take a screenshot of your working screen. If it looks different a week later, you added something without noticing.
The usual mistake
Constantly switching chart types and adding indicators during a session. Changing tools mid-session is a way to justify an entry.
A practical example
Switch the chart to line and look at the last 20 periods, then switch to candles and look at the same 20.
On the candles you will see long wicks where the line showed an even move. That is exactly the information the line mode is missing.
Lesson 10 of 15 in “BINODEX START”