High's and Lows of Candle Sticks

When I look at Tick by tick data, I see the bid and ask lines moving with every tick.

The question is that when M30 or H4 graph of candle sticks, are the Open, High Low, and Close reported based on Bid or Ask Prices in each candle?

The open, close, high and low are based on the observations within the time period for which you set to view candles. For example, if you set M30, then it means that the open, close, high and low on a candle are the values for the 30 minutes period (which started after the 30 min. candle before that ended).

I have a friend who swears that OHLC bar charts are much easier to read, but I am so much more comfortable with candlesticks. Anyone got any fair reasoning as to why I should use one more than the other?

Some people find it easier to read and interpret candles because they can see the body and wick which can make it easier to distinguish what has happen. Others are old school and used to looking at bars. I prefer the bars even after having spent years with candles. Not sure why just to me it they are easier to read.

Razor

:s

or to answer the actual question... the bid.

lol... Thanks a lot for answering the original question.

ANy reason why its displayed based on BID? Can we set it to Ask? I just wanted to confirm that its not possible that one candle stick represents High based on highest ASK price in that time frame and Lows based on lowest Bid pricee?

no worries. i saw the question ages ago and figured someone else could handle it. i guess not.

not entirely sure why it's on bid and not ask. perhaps it is because most people are bulls? or perhaps the designers were bulls? i think you will find it's linked into a dark magical piece of trickery in the forex world... tied into the fact that you always buy at the worst price and sell at the worst price. at some point you need to realise that the 'trades' you take in your trading platform mean nothing to the real forex world and are really just positions taken in a shadow game separate to the real thing. i believe the 'bid' is just whatever the last transaction price in the real world is, and the 'ask' is just the offset given to this to create the spread. yes there is a real spread in the real game, but i doubt it is represented in what your platform shows.

i do not believe you can set it to ask. to do so would screw up the representation of the 'game'. plus i believe the whole point of retail forex is to never have all the relevant pieces of information easily, or at all. no hard feelings to the game, but it is what it is.

next week i may change my mind *shrug*

That clarifies it.

BTW, FXCM allows you to see candles on Bid and ASK . Its just two button in Marketscope 2.0 of their platform.

Thanks a lot everyone.