Know about Candlestick Chart !

A candlestick chart is a style of bar-chart used primarily to describe price movements of an equity over time.

It is a combination of a line-chart and a bar-chart, in that each bar represents the range of price movement over a given time interval. It is most often used in technical analysis of equity and currency price patterns. They appear superficially similar to error bars, but are unrelated.
Contents
1 History
2 Candlestick layout
3 Patterns
3.1 Simple Patterns
3.2 Complex Patterns
4 Use of candlestick charts
5 See also
6 External links

History:
Candlestick charts are said to have been developed in the 18th century by legendary Japanese rice trader Homma Munehisa. The charts gave Homma and others an overview of open, high, low, and close market prices over a certain period. This style of charting is very popular due to the level of ease in reading and understanding the graphs. Since the 17th century, there has been a lot of effort to relate chart patterns to the likely future behavior of a market. This method of charting prices proved to be particularly interesting, due to the ability to display five data points instead of one. The Japanese rice traders also found that the resulting charts would provide a fairly reliable tool to predict future demand.

Steve Nison's 1991 book, Japanese Candlestick Charting Techniques,called back into traders' memory this particular form of charting, which had already been picked up by Charles Dow around 1900. Today it is one of the most commonly used chart displaying methods with traders.

Candlestick layout :
Candlesticks are usually composed of the body (black or white), an upper and a lower shadow . The wick illustrates the highest and lowest traded prices of a stock, and the body the opening and closing trades. If the stock went up, the body is white, with the opening price at the bottom of the body and the closing price at the top. If the stock went down, the body is black, with the opening price at the top and the closing price at the bottom. A candlestick need not have either a body or a wick. (Rest: Next Sunday)