Japanese Candlesticks: There is Power in the Cylinders
This has nothing to do with internal combustion engines. There was a time when very few American-made cars had engines of only four bylinders. All during the thirties and forties, the Chevrolet had six cylinders; so did the Plymouth, Dodge, DeSoto, Pontiac, and Oldsmobile. The Buick was an eight-cylinder car; so were the Cadillac, the Lincoln, and the top-line Chrysler offerings. Today, however, very few cars have eight cylinders. Most are V-6 engines and the lower-priced offerings feature four cylinderrs and are proud of it.
The Japanese Candlestick system of financial price presentation is based on cylinders, too. They are simply a "fattening-out" of the standard (and old) bar chart so as to record in visual form the span between the opening and closing prices for any given time frame. The beaury of the candles is that, singly or in some combinations, they accurately reflect the psychology of the market during that given time frame and, in some cases, are accurate predictors of major changes in price trend. All investors and traders should learn the candles. They are easy to absorb and, once the viewer uses them, he or she will never go back to the "old way," because the candles display so much more valuable information which can be very useful and profitable in day to day investing.