Forex time frames are found on your charts. There is no best time frame – they are all useful for different purposes.
Candlestick patterns are by far the most commonly used type of chart. From here on out, any chart examples I give will be using candlesticks because they are the easiest to read. They also give an abundance of information which you will learn all about later.
Ticks to Months
All charts you see when trading Forex have a time frame.
In the previous section you saw what a candle chart looks like – a series of candles plotted on a chart. The time frame of a chart simply refers to the length of each candle.
The chart below is a 1 hour chart (commonly written as “1hr” or “Hourly chart”).
So each of the candles on the 1hr chart above were open for exactly 1 hour. What happens is:
- The previous candle closes and instantly a new one opens.
- The new candle moves about up and down for an hour.
- The candle closes and a new one opens instantly, repeating the process again.
You can have charts as low as tick charts – basically 1 seconds charts. You get a new candle every second on this! You can also get charts as high as monthly charts, in which a candle opens at the start of a month and closes at the end. Each of those candles would represent an entire month. Traders use a whole range of Forex time frames for their trading.