Forex Chart Types: Candles Charts - Bar Charts - Line Charts
In forex trading, there are different chart types that traders can use in their trading. These chart types are provided on the trading platform software and on the trading platform traders can then choose which chart type is best for their trading method. A trader can choose to trade with forex line charts, forex bar charts or candlestick charts.
A Forex chart is a graphical representation of price movement of a currency pair over a given period of time.
The forex chart is drawn on a grid and the user of this forex chart is at liberty to choose which forex chart time frame they want to trade with. The forex trader might select to use hourly charts, daily charts or even 1 minutes chart time-frames.
To draw forex charts, three techniques are used. Techniques used to draw the forex charts defines the type of forex chart.
The three types of forex charts are: - Candles Charts - Bar Charts - Line Charts
- Line charts
- Bar charts
- Candlesticks forex charts - Most popular
Line Chart - MT4 Line Charts
A single line is plotted from one closing price to the next, forming a continuous line.
This type of chart provides very little information on chart and is therefore not very popular among forex traders. In fact this type of forex chart gets rarely used by traders.
Line Chart in Trading Forex - This type of chart leaves out important information about forex trading price movement. Information such as opening, high & low point of the forex price that aren't represented on the graph.
This makes this type of forex line chart to be considered sketchy by forex technical analysts.
The forex chart below shows an example of a forex line chart.
Bar Chart - MT4 Bar Charts
Forex Bar Charts - This type of chart shows the opening, closing, the high and the low, for a particular forex trading price interval and is represented by bars that look like ones drawn below - hence its name bar charts
- Bar Charts - bar chart has a vertical bar showing the total forex trading price movement.
- Left horizontal bar the opening
- Right horizontal bar the closing
- High & low denoted by the highest & lowest point
However, these forex bar charts aren't very easy to work with, especially when they aren't magnified. It becomes very hard to analyze the bar charts with ease when trading the forex market thus making them not very popular among forex traders.
A Bar chart that is not magnified makes it hard to view the opening and closing forex price as illustrated by this example:
Candlestick Chart - MT4 Candles Charts
Candlesticks Charts - This is the most widely used type of forex charts, they resemble candles, thus their name - candles charts.
Candlesticks charts shows the opening, closing, the high & the low of a particular forex trading price interval.
The range between the open price & the close price is called the body of the candle.
Forex candlesticks charts is the most popular type of forex charts among online traders because it is the easiest to interpret when trading the FX market. Forex candlestick charts also gives a lot of data about the forex trading price movement. This makes candlesticks charts the most widely used type of charting in FX.
Candle Sticks Charts
Below is an example of candlesticks charts. To learn more about candlesticks charts, read this topic:Technical Analysis of Japanese Candles Patterns in Forex Trading.
How to Select These Forex Trading Chart Types on MT4 Platform
To draw any of these types of forex charts on the MT4 Platform a trader can use the buttons below found on this MT4 platform.
Drawing Forex Charts in MetaTrader 4 Software
- To Choose a Bar Chart Click the Bar Button
- To Choose a Candles Chart Click the Candlestick Button Key
- To Choose a Line Charts - Click the Line Button
