16/10/2022
Single- and Multiple-Bar Price Analysis
Our next topic gets into the basic parts of every price chart — the price bars themselves. For this section on
single- and multiple-bar price analysis, we will focus on price bars that include the open for the period (whether
it be one minute, one hour, one day, one month or one year), the high of the period, the close and the low.
Charts that use this kind of bar to display prices are called open-high-low-close price charts. You may also see
the abbreviation, OHLC.
Some people prefer to use close-only price charts, which appear as a single line, but I started off using the
open-high-low-close price charts, and I still use them today, because I believe that they provide you with all
the information you need. (Candlestick price charts also provide a large amount of information, but we will
stick with just one kind of price chart for this course
It is also important to examine the range of a bar, because if markets close in the lower 20% or 10% of a price
bar, that means that the bears or the sellers have good control of that market. Odds are that this market will
drop lower the next trading session. Conversely, if the markets close in the upper 20 percent, then the buyers,
or the bulls, have good control of the market. Odds are that this market will push higher the following day.
There’s no crystal ball in this kind of work. There is skill involved, but mostly it has to do with simply evalu-
ating odds and evaluating probabilities. For instance, looking at the price bar on the left, my bet is that there
will be a new high above the close. So, I just made a forecast: I’m looking for higher prices. And what did I
use? I used a single price bar.
That’s how important this work can be. If you learn how to read a price chart, you can actually create a fore-
cast by looking at the facts. This kind of forecast isn’t simply based on a good idea or a hunch. It isn’t merely
a hypothesis.