Every candle records four prices: open, high, low, close. The body shows where price settled; a wick is a price the market visited and rejected. This page shows how to read both, and why a long wick through an obvious level is usually a sweep of the orders resting there.
Left: the parts of a single candle. Right: a sweep wick at support. The long lower wick punches below an obvious support, fills the resting orders, and price rejects the level and reverses. The wick marks where price went and was refused.
FOUNDATIONS·~9 min read·Updated on ·Art of Trading
01 The four prices in every candle
One candle records four numbers
Open, high, low, and close, over one slice of time.
A candlestick compresses one window of time into exactly four prices: open, high, low, close. Every candle read on this page is a relationship between those four numbers.
One bar, four prices. The body spans open to close; the wicks reach out to the high and the low.
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Body equals acceptance, wick equals rejection
The body is where price agreed to settle for the bar. The wicks are where it tried to go and could not stay. Every read on this page builds on that pair.
02 Bull and bear bodies, and our chart colors
Close above open is bullish, below is bearish
On our charts: light grey bull bodies, teal bear bodies.
The body's two edges are open and close, and their order is the direction: close above open is a bull bar, close below open is a bear bar. Art of Trading charts color them light grey and teal so direction reads at a glance.
Bull. Light grey body (#b8b8b8). Open sits low, close sits high, buyers won the bar.Bear. Teal body (#26c6da). Open sits high, close sits low, sellers won the bar.
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Grey and teal candles keep red and green for decisions
We color bull bodies light grey and bear bodies teal, and reserve red and green for the annotations that mark a decision: levels, sweeps, entries. The candles stay quiet so the levels stand out.
03 A wick is a rejected price
A wick marks a price the market refused
Price traded there, the other side overpowered it, and the bar closed back away.
A wick is a price that traded and then got rejected: buyers or sellers pushed into that zone, the other side overpowered them, and price snapped back before the bar closed. The longer the wick, the harder the refusal.
Upper wicks at resistance precede the sell-off. Price tapped the same ceiling twice, and both bars closed far below their highs. That repeated refusal is the warning before the drop.
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Meaningful wicks cluster at the same few levels
Find the three longest wicks on your current chart and note what price each wick reached and what happened right after. The wicks that mattered land on the same handful of levels, not at random.
04 Long wicks at obvious levels are sweeps
A long wick through a level is a stop run
The wick stabs past the level, fills the resting orders, and closes back on the original side.
Orders pile up around obvious levels: breakout sellers on a clean support, protective stops just beneath it. A long wick that stabs below and closes back above ran those orders, filled, and left.
The sweep wick. Equal lows collect sell stops beneath them. One bar spikes through, triggers those stops, and closes back inside. The long lower wick is the fill, and the reversal follows once the selling is absorbed.
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Selling the break of support joins the swept side
The break of an obvious support is exactly the move that gets bought. Shorting the stab with a stop just above the level adds your orders to the pile the sweep was built to collect.
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Draw the level as a zone that covers the wicks
The sweep almost always overshoots a pixel-thin line. Draw support and resistance as a zone that covers the wicks, not one exact price. Do the same with a trend line: thicken it into a trend zone, line 1 on the shallow edge of two pullbacks and line 2 parallel through their deepest wicks.
05 Three candle shapes, judged by location
Judge the shape by where it prints
Rejection bar, engulfing bar, and doji: each one means something only at a level.
Three shapes cover most of the candlestick glossary: the rejection bar, the engulfing bar, and the doji. Each one is judged by where it prints, not by its name.
Rejection. Long wick, small body, at a level. Price tested lower and got refused. Meaningful at support, noise in mid-air.Engulfing. One body fully covers the last. The strong close is the signal, not the shape. Best when it reclaims a level.Doji. Open and close nearly equal, both sides fought to a draw. It is a pause. What it means depends entirely on where it prints.
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The same shape is bullish, bearish, or meaningless by location
A hammer in the middle of a range is noise. A doji after a long trend is a warning. The same candle changes meaning with location, so trading a shape for its name means reading the label instead of the market.
06 Why wicks land on obvious levels
Wicks land where the orders rest
Obvious levels are pools of orders, and price gets pushed into them.
A visible level is an area of interest, and interest means resting orders: liquidity. Large players need that liquidity to fill size, so price gets pushed into it, fills, and leaves. The wick is the record of that fill.
The wick records the fill. The uptrend rests on an obvious support, so orders gather below it. Price is pushed down into that pool, fills the size it needed, and continues up.
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Interest is liquidity, and liquidity is the target
A pattern or a level creates an area of interest. Interest means resting orders, and institutions move price into those orders to fill their own size. The long wick left afterward is the visible trace of that fill.
How to read a wick in four steps
Locate the level first
Before you judge any wick, mark the obvious levels: equal highs, equal lows, prior swing points. A wick only carries weight if it lands on one.
Measure the refusal
How far did the wick reach past the level, and how fast did it come back? A deep stab that closes fully back inside is a strong rejection.
Check the close, not the spike
The high or low is where price visited. The close is where it agreed to stay. A sweep only counts if the bar closes back on the right side of the level.
Wait for the reaction
One wick is a hint. The follow-through bar that continues away from the swept level is the confirmation. No reaction, no trade.
The whole page in five lines
Every candle is four prices: open, high, low, close, over one slice of time.
The body is where price settled; the wick is where it went and was refused.
A wick means little in open space and a great deal at a level everyone can see.
A long wick through an obvious level is often a sweep: it ran the orders, filled, and left.
