Glossary term
OHLC
Open, High, Low, Close — the four price points that summarise a trading interval. OHLC bars and their cousin, the candlestick, are the foundation of price charts and almost every technical pattern. Closelook's Stock Detail page renders OHLC with a 50/200 SMA overlay using the LightweightCharts library.
Definition & Context
OHLC captures four moments of a trading period: the first trade (Open), the highest trade (High), the lowest trade (Low) and the last trade (Close). Every traditional bar chart, candlestick chart, and technical indicator in modern use is built on OHLC. Japanese candlesticks add colour (green/red) and a body (open–close) with wicks (high and low). Renko, Point-and-Figure, and Heikin-Ashi are all reparameterisations of the same underlying OHLC stream.
OHLC data comes in different granularities. Daily bars dominate long-horizon investing; 1-minute and 5-minute bars are the default for day trading; hourly bars are common for swing trading. Closing price is the most analysed of the four because it captures end-of-day settlement and is used for most moving averages, but range (High − Low) is critical for volatility analysis and Wilder’s ATR.
Why It Matters for Investors
If you cannot read an OHLC chart, you cannot use Closelook’s Signal feed, Stock Detail page, or Weekly Signal — all of them speak in OHLC. The Stock Detail page under Tracker uses the LightweightCharts library to render OHLC candles with 50-day and 200-day SMA overlays and performance metrics. The Pattern Scanner reads the same OHLC stream daily after the US close to match 51 Directional-Alpha patterns.
Related Concepts
OHLC feeds RSI and other oscillators, is the data substrate for Elliott Wave analysis, and provides the range metric that Linear Regression Channels use.