Open

In practice

On a green EUR/USD daily candle that opened at 1.1040 and closed at 1.1065, the open (1.1040) sits at the bottom of the body. On a red candle opening 1.1065 and closing 1.1040, the same 1.1065 open sits at the top.

Why it matters for traders

The open sets the reference point for judging the candle's struggle — whether price spent the period climbing above it or sinking below it. Comparing where price opened versus where it closed is the simplest possible way to read who won the period, before you ever look at patterns.

Common pitfall

Beginners focus on the close and ignore the open, missing that the relationship between the two defines the candle. The pitfall is reading a green body as bullish without noticing price opened with a gap and immediately sold off from there. Compare open to close to judge who won the period, and watch for gaps between the open and the prior close, which carry their own information about overnight sentiment shifts.

Putting it in context

Like all candlestick concepts, this pattern is a clue about order flow, not a guarantee about what happens next. Its reliability depends heavily on context: the same shape means little in the middle of a range but can be significant at a well-tested support level, a prior swing high, or a round psychological number. Professional traders also weigh the timeframe — a signal on the daily chart carries far more weight than one on the five-minute chart, where noise dominates. Before trading any candlestick pattern with real money, scroll back through at least a hundred historical examples on the pairs you trade and note how often the expected follow-through actually occurred, and what the best confirmation and stop placement would have been.

Lessons that use this term

• Weekend gap risk

  Why a stop loss does not protect you between Friday's close and Sunday's open.

• What a single candle shows

  Open, high, low, close, body and wick — the four prices packed into one shape.

Related terms