How to Read an OHLC Bar Chart

Direct answer

An OHLC bar is a vertical line spanning the interval's high to low, with a left tick marking the open and a right tick marking the close. It carries exactly the same four prices as a candlestick and no additional information — the difference is entirely visual grammar.

Step 1 — Read the vertical line

The line spans the interval's full range:

   │  ← high
 ──┤  ← close (right tick)
   │
 ├─┤
 │ │
─┤ │  ← open (left tick)
   │
   │  ← low

Line top is the high, bottom is the low. Its length is the interval's total range.

Step 2 — Read the ticks

• Left tick — the open. Always on the left, by convention, because time runs left to right.
• Right tick — the close.

Direction follows from their relative positions: right tick above left means the close was above the open.

Step 3 — Judge the interval

Same reasoning as candlesticks, read differently:

• Ticks far apart — decisive movement between open and close.
• Ticks close together — the interval ended near where it started, whatever happened in between.
• Long line, close ticks — wide range, little net movement. A lot was rejected.
• Open near the low, close near the high — the interval advanced through its range.

Bars versus candlesticks

When bars read better: dense charts with many intervals, where candle bodies overlap into a solid block; comparing ranges across intervals, since the line length is unobstructed; and printing or low-colour displays, since bars do not depend on colour to convey direction.

When candlesticks read better: spotting open-to-close relationships quickly, and any pattern vocabulary, which is built around body and wick proportions.

Neither is more accurate. Preference and task.

Conventions that vary

Check rather than assume:

• Colour. Some platforms colour bars by direction, some by whether the close exceeded the previous close — a different thing entirely.
• Tick length. Cosmetic; carries no meaning.
• Timestamp labelling. A bar may be labelled by its open time or its close time. This shifts the whole chart by one interval relative to another platform.
• HLC bars omit the open tick. Fewer prices, less information.

Step 4 — The same two checks

Identical to candlesticks, and just as necessary:

• trades_count — was this bar built from real activity, or a handful of trades? Two bars can look identical and mean entirely different things.
• is_closed — a forming bar's right tick and line extent are still moving.

Both are exposed by CoinDock's candles API. See OHLC charts explained.

Common mistakes

• Reading the right tick as the open. Time runs left to right; open is left.
• Assuming colour means direction when it may mean close-versus-previous-close.
• Comparing charts across platforms without checking whether bars are labelled by open or close time.
• Skipping trade count — a bar from four trades is not a description of a market.

Related

• OHLC Charts Explained
• How to Read a Candlestick
• How to Use Different Chart Timeframes