Bar chart
Also known as: OHLC chart
A bar chart, also called an OHLC chart, is a way of plotting a 's price history that shows the open, high, low, and close for each period as a single vertical bar. The top and bottom of the bar mark the high and low prices traded during that period, a small tick extending to the left marks the opening price, and a small tick extending to the right marks the closing price.
This format packs more information into each period than a simple , which only shows the closing price, while presenting it in a plainer visual style than a , which uses colored bodies to make the same four data points easier to scan at a glance. Because a bar chart does not fill in a colored body between the open and close, some traders find it less immediately readable than candlesticks for spotting patterns, but it shows exactly the same underlying data.
Bar charts were the standard charting format among Western traders and for decades before , originally developed in Japan, became widely available on trading platforms and took over as the more common default. Both chart types are built from identical open, high, low, and close data, so any pattern that can be read on one can technically be read on the other, the difference is purely visual presentation.