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What is a market chart and how to read it?
What is a market chart and how to read it?

With a crypto market live chart, you can identify and analyze price movements, patterns, and tendencies to fulfill your trading strategy.

Rick Alexsson avatar
Written by Rick Alexsson
Updated over a week ago

A market chart is a visual representation of a currency pair’s price over a set period of time. With a crypto market live chart, you can identify and analyze price movements, patterns, and tendencies to fulfill your trading strategy.

There are the three most popular price chart types — line chart, bar chart, and candlestick chart. The data to create these chart types may be almost the same but the way that data is presented and interpreted will vary.

By default, the trading terminal on the CEX.IO Spot Trading platform shows OHLCV candlestick charts. Many traders like this chart type because it is easier to read than other ones. However, you can change the visualization of the price chart by clicking on the symbol of the candles in the upper left of the terminal.

OHLCV candlestick chart is called this way because it shows:

  • O — open price

  • H — high or maximum price in a selected period

  • L — low or minimum price in a selected period

  • C — close price

  • V — volume in a selected period

A vertical line in a candlestick indicates the high-to-low range. The larger block or “body” represents the difference between the opening and closing price.

Candlesticks help visualize bullish or bearish sentiment by displaying “bodies” using different colors. The green color signifies price growth, red signifies decline. Those are calculated between the first and last trade in the selected period.

1. Market reflects the selected currency pair to understand what crypto market chart you see.

2. Market data shows

  • Best Bid - The lowest available price to buy.

  • Best Ask - The highest available price to sell.

  • Price change in the last 24 hours (indicated in both the quoted currency and a percentage).

  • Total Trading Volume for this pair in the last 24 hours.

3. The price scale shows the price.

4. OHLCV candlestick shows aggregated stats of every buy and sell transaction on CEX.IO at a given period. Hovering your mouse over the candlestick will show detailed information.


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CEX.IO Corp. is not a registered broker-dealer or FINRA member. Crypto is not insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) or the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC).

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