Types of Charts

The same price, drawn six ways

Every chart engine consumes the same underlying OHLCV data — open, high, low, close, volume per bar. What differs is how that data is drawn on screen. Six formats dominate the industry: line, bar (OHLC), candlestick, Heiken Ashi, Renko, and point-and-figure. Each strips away different information to highlight different structure.

Before diving into each: the meta-rule is that your chart type must match the decision you are trying to make. If you're scanning multi-year trends across 40 stocks, a compact line chart is far better than 40 candlestick charts. If you're timing a 15-min breakout entry, a candlestick chart is essential. Wrong chart for the job means either information overload or missed signal.

1.1 Line chart

A single line connecting closing prices, one point per bar. The cleanest visualisation — it strips out intra-bar noise entirely and shows only where each period settled. Useful for long-term trend scans where wick noise would just clutter the view.

• Use when — scanning multi-year trends, comparing 5–10 instruments on a single overlay, presenting to non-technical audiences
• Avoid when — timing entries, identifying reversal candles, spotting gap opens, judging intraday volatility
• Information loss — everything except the close is discarded. A 200-point wick that closed unchanged shows as flat

1.2 Bar chart (OHLC)

Each bar is a vertical line spanning the low to the high of the period, with a tick on the left marking the open and a tick on the right marking the close. All four price points visible; no filled body. Historically preferred by Western floor traders before candlesticks became mainstream, and still dominant on some institutional systems.

• Use when — plotting years of daily data where candle bodies would visually merge, or when comparing multiple overlaid instruments
• Avoid when — reading Japanese candlestick patterns (the pattern vocabulary was built for candles, not bars)
• Information loss — none; but body-less rendering makes bullish/bearish direction slower to read at a glance

1.3 Candlestick chart

Same four OHLC numbers, but the open-to-close range is drawn as a filled "body" — green (or hollow) if close > open, red (or filled) if close < open. Wicks extend to the high and low. Invented by 18th-century Japanese rice traders and now the global default for one reason: the visual contrast makes buying-vs-selling pressure instantly readable.

The chart below shows ~2 years of daily Nifty 50 as candlesticks — hover any bar to inspect its OHLC.

• Use when — every discretionary decision. This is the default for a reason
• Body-to-wick ratio — long body, short wicks = decisive session; small body, long wicks = indecision or rejection
• Colour convention — green/red is Western; Japanese originals use white/black. Some platforms flip on user preference. Read the legend

1.4 Heiken Ashi (smoothed candles)

Heiken Ashi ("average bar" in Japanese) computes each candle from a smoothed formula rather than raw OHLC:

HA_close = (O + H + L + C) / 4
HA_open  = (previous HA_open + previous HA_close) / 2
HA_high  = max(H, HA_open, HA_close)
HA_low   = min(L, HA_open, HA_close)

The result: a chart where a strong trend produces a run of same-colour candles with no lower wick (uptrend) or no upper wick (downtrend). A colour change or a candle with wicks on both sides signals trend weakness. Great for trend-following; poor for exact entry timing because the smoothing lags real price by one bar.

1.5 Renko charts

Renko (Japanese "brick") strips out time entirely. A new "brick" is drawn only when price moves a preset amount (e.g., ₹20 for Nifty). Small back-and-forth moves that would clutter a candlestick chart produce zero new bricks. The visual result: pure trend structure with no consolidation noise.

• Use when — swing trading where you want to filter out mid-session chop
• Trade-off — you lose all sense of time. A single brick could represent 5 minutes or 5 days
• Brick size selection — too small = noise; too large = you enter trends after they've already run. Most Indian traders use ATR(14) × 0.5 as brick size

1.6 Point-and-figure

The oldest technical chart type (used since the 1880s). Columns of X's (rising price) and O's (falling price). A new X is added only when price rises by a preset "box size"; a new O column starts only after a "reversal amount" (typically 3 boxes) is retraced. Time and volume are irrelevant.

Rarely used in Indian discretionary trading today, but still useful for identifying long-term horizontal support/resistance levels because irrelevant noise is compressed out entirely. Sensibull and Chartink don't offer it natively; TradingView does.

Which chart type should you actually use?

For 95% of Indian retail trading decisions, the answer is candlesticks. The remaining 5%:

• Line chart — end-of-day portfolio-wide scan, or long-term (5+ year) trend context
• Heiken Ashi — filtering noise on scalping setups where you need clear trend regime (see the SAR + RSI + Heiken Ashi scalping strategy on this site)
• Renko — swing traders who want a chop-filter and can trade without a strict time schedule

Every strategy chart on this site renders in candlesticks by default with the option to overlay indicators. Bar, line, and Renko are useful compact reference views but rarely the primary chart for active trading.

Timeframes: the second dimension

The chart type is how to draw price. The timeframe is how much price to compress into each bar. Common choices in Indian markets:

Worked example — same session, three chart types

Consider a Nifty session that opens at 25,000, rallies to 25,180, retraces to 25,050, and closes at 25,140 on 15% higher volume than yesterday.

• Line chart — you see only "25,000 → 25,140". No indication that the day traded a 180-point range or that intraday sellers came in near the high
• Candlestick — one green candle with body 25,000 → 25,140, upper wick to 25,180 (rejection at the high), lower wick to 25,050 (dip bought). Full context in one bar
• Heiken Ashi — computed values differ (HA_close = (25,000 + 25,180 + 25,050 + 25,140) / 4 = 25,092.5). If yesterday's HA was already in an uptrend, this bar continues green. But the "real" close was 25,140 — never place a stop-loss using the HA number

Same underlying session. Three very different visual stories. The candlestick view gives the fullest picture and is what the rest of this path assumes unless noted otherwise.