Question 1

What are the two axes on a price chart?

Accepted Answer

The vertical axis is the price axis, which reads the value of the asset from low at the bottom to high at the top. The horizontal axis is the time axis, which reads time from older on the left to newer on the right. Every point on a chart is one price at one moment.

Question 2

What does volume show on a chart?

Accepted Answer

Volume is the number of shares or contracts traded during each period, usually drawn as bars along the bottom. A tall volume bar means a lot of trading took place, and a short bar means relatively little. Volume shows how much activity was behind a price move, which price alone cannot tell you.

Question 3

Why does the same chart look different on different timeframes?

Accepted Answer

Each candle covers one slice of time set by the timeframe, so a one minute chart packs many small candles into the space a daily chart fills with one. Switching the timeframe regroups the same data into bigger or smaller bars, which can hide small moves or reveal them.