Chart Types

A <Em > chart type</Em >> is the visual representation method used to display price, volume, and other market data over time. While the underlying data stream is identical — open, high, low, close, and volume for each period — each chart type applies a unique transformation to expose different aspects of market structure. Choosing the right chart type is one of the most consequential decisions a trader makes, as it directly shapes what patterns are visible and what signals are generated.

Chart types fall into two broad philosophical camps. > Time-based charts (candlestick, bar, line, area) plot data at fixed calendar intervals, preserving the chronological relationship between bars. > Price-based charts (Renko, Kagi, Point & Figure, Range Bars, Line Break) discard fixed time intervals and instead plot new elements only when price moves by a specified amount, filtering out time-induced noise and revealing pure price structure. A third category — > volume-based and orderflow charts — incorporates volume data and orderbook depth to show the forces driving price movement.

The practice of charting financial data originated in 18th-century Japan, where <Em > Munehisa Homma</Em > — a rice trader from Sakata — developed what would later become candlestick charting to track rice futures contracts on the Dojima Rice Exchange. Homma’s methods, documented in his book <Em >"Sakata Senho"</Em >, were the first systematic attempt to visualize price action and identify recurring patterns in market behaviour. His techniques remained largely unknown to the Western world for over 200 years.

In the late 19th century, > Charles Dow — founder of The Wall Street Journal — formalized Dow Theory, which established the conceptual foundation for modern trend analysis and bar charting. Dow’s principles of primary, secondary, and minor trends, along with his confirmation theory, remain cornerstones of technical analysis today. His contemporary <Em > Charles H. Dow</Em > (co-founder of Dow Jones & Company) is often credited as the father of Western technical analysis.

The Point & Figure charting method emerged in the early 1900s, popularized by <Em > Richard Wyckoff</Em >> and later refined by <Em > Victor deVilliers</Em >> and <Em > Charles B. Milliken</Em >. Renko charts, derived from the Japanese word "renga" meaning "brick," also originated in Japan. Kagi charts followed a similar path — their name derives from the Japanese word for "key" or "hook," reflecting the angular turning points that characterize the chart.

The 1960s brought Heikin-Ashi ("average bar" in Japanese), developed by Japanese technicians to smooth price noise while preserving trend direction. With the advent of personal computers in the 1980s and 90s, charting became accessible to retail traders. The 2000s introduced orderflow and volume-profile charting as tick-level data became available. The 2010s saw the rise of WebGL-powered GPU-accelerated chart types capable of rendering millions of bars in real time. Today, Quatick Charts offers over 40 distinct chart types across four renderer families, spanning three centuries of market visualization innovation.

Quatick Charts organizes chart types into six families, each serving a distinct analytical purpose. These families are not mutually exclusive — many traders use multiple chart types across different timeframes or monitor windows to build a complete picture of market structure.

The most fundamental distinction in chart types is whether they use <Em > time</Em >> or <Em > price movement</Em >> as the bar-formation trigger. Time-based charts (candlestick, bar, line, area) create a new bar every fixed interval — five minutes, one hour, one day, etc. This approach preserves the temporal sequence of events but produces irregular bar sizes during quiet periods (many small-range bars) and volatile periods (few large-range bars), making it harder to distinguish genuine price structure from time-induced noise.

Price-based charts (Renko, Kagi, Point & Figure, Range Bars, Line Break) discard the time axis entirely and create new elements only when price travels a specified distance. This produces a clean, noise-filtered view where every element represents a meaningful price move. The trade-off is that the time dimension is lost — a price-based chart cannot tell you when a move occurred, only that it did occur. Many experienced traders use both: a time-based chart for context and timing, and a price-based chart for structure and targets.

Selecting the right chart type depends on several factors. > Trading style and timeframe — scalpers need the detail of candlesticks or orderflow charts on short timeframes; swing traders benefit from the noise-filtration of Heikin-Ashi or Renko; long-term investors may prefer simple line or area charts on weekly or monthly timeframes. > Instrument type — volatile instruments benefit from price-based charts that normalize for volatility; range-bound instruments show clearer structure on time-based charts. > Analytical goal — pattern recognition requires candlestick or Point & Figure charts; trend analysis benefits from line or Heikin-Ashi charts; volume analysis requires orderflow or volume-footprint charts.

Quatick Charts makes it easy to experiment: every chart type can be switched at runtime with a single call to <Em > chart.setChartType()</Em >, preserving all indicators, drawings, and data. There is no need to reload or re-fetch data — the transformation happens entirely on the client side. This allows traders to view the same data through multiple lenses without any overhead.

Candle charts are the most popular chart type globally, used by an estimated 70% of retail and institutional traders. Each candle encodes four data points (open, high, low, close) into a compact, visually intuitive form: a rectangular "body" representing the open-to-close range, and thin "wicks" (or "shadows") extending to the high and low of the period. The body is coloured green or white when close exceeds open (bullish), and red or black when close falls below open (bearish).

The Quatick candle family includes four variants: > Candlestick (standard OHLC), > Hollow Candle (momentum-based hollow/filled bodies), > Volume Candle (body width proportional to volume), and <Em > Heikin-Ashi</Em > (modified OHLC for trend smoothing). Each variant offers a different lens on the same underlying data, exposing different aspects of market behaviour.

Bar charts predate candlestick charts in Western technical analysis and remain the preferred format for many quantitative and institutional traders. A single bar displays the same four data points as a candle — open (left tick), high (top of vertical line), low (bottom of vertical line), close (right tick) — but in a less visually weighted format that some traders find less emotionally biased.

The Quatick bar family includes: > OHLC Bars (four-ticks per bar), > HLC Bar (three-ticks, no open), > High-Low (simple range line), and <Em > Columns</Em > (histogram-style volume columns). Bar charts are particularly useful for informed (algorithmic) trading because their clinical, less visual format reduces emotional bias in pattern recognition.

Line charts are the simplest chart type, connecting closing prices (or another selected OHLC field) with a continuous line. Their simplicity is their strength: they remove the visual clutter of individual bars, exposing only the trend. This makes line charts ideal for overlaying multiple symbols on the same pane, comparing relative performance, or visualizing moving averages and other trend-following indicators.

Area charts extend the line chart by filling the region between the line and a baseline (typically the x-axis or a reference price) with a solid colour — often a gradient that fades toward the baseline. This fill makes it easy to visually assess the magnitude of price moves and to identify trends at a glance. The <Em > Baseline</Em >> variant colours the fill differently above and below a reference level, making it ideal for relative-performance and mean-reversion charts.

Volume and orderflow chart types are the most advanced in the Quatick system, designed for professional and institutional traders who need to see the forces driving price at the tick level. These chart types incorporate not just price and volume, but the <Em > direction of trade</Em > — whether volume was initiated by buyers or sellers — and, in the case of orderflow charts, the full depth-of-market orderbook state.

The family includes: > Volume Footprint (bid/ask volume per price level), > Orderflow Chart (full footprint with cumulative delta, CVD ribbon, and live depth ladder), > TPO Market Profile (time-price-opportunity letters), and <Em > Volume Profile</Em > (horizontal volume distribution with POC and value area). These chart types require no additional data — they derive everything from the standard OHLCV stream and optional orderbook state.

Speciality chart types represent the pinnacle of noise filtration in technical analysis. By discarding the time axis entirely, they reveal the underlying structure of price movement that time-based charts obscure. Each type uses a different construction rule: Renko draws fixed-size bricks, Kagi draws thick/thin lines that reverse at price thresholds, Point & Figure plots X and O columns in a grid, Range Bars create fixed-range candles, and Line Break draws blocks that form when prior N lines are broken.

These chart types are especially valuable in <Em > range-bound markets</Em >, where time-based charts produce noisy whipsaws, and in <Em > trending markets</Em >, where they provide clean, early trend signals without the distraction of short-term counter-trend moves. The Quatick implementation supports ATR-based auto-sizing for all speciality chart types, automatically adapting to the volatility of the instrument being charted.

Beyond the logical chart type categories, Quatick Charts organizes its renderers into four technical families based on the rendering technology: > Standard (Canvas2D & WebGL)> for the core OHLCV chart types with automatic GPU fallback; > Price Action (Canvas2D)> for speciality charts that require custom synthetic x-axis handling; > Orderflow / Profile (Canvas2D)> for the computationally intensive footprint and depth renderers; and <Em > Native WebGL GPU</Em >> for entirely shader-based chart types with unique visual aesthetics like neon, glass, holographic, aurora, and fractal candles.

The renderer family affects what visual configurations are available and what performance characteristics apply, but it does not affect the underlying data transformation. A candlestick renders identically whether using Canvas2D or WebGL — the choice affects only rendering performance and visual effects.

Quatick Charts supports runtime chart type switching through the <Em > chart.setChartType(id)</Em >> API. When switching, the engine applies the chart type transformation to the existing data stream without any data re-fetch, re-initialization, or state loss. All indicators, drawings, overlays, and scale settings are preserved across the switch. This enables traders to fluidly move between chart types during analysis without disrupting their workflow.

Each chart type supports optional configuration parameters — brick size for Renko, reversal amount for Kagi, lines for Line Break, box size for Point & Figure, rows for orderflow charts — that fine-tune the transformation. These parameters are set via <Em > chart.configure()</Em >> and can be adjusted at any time, with the transformation recalculated automatically.

• 1.Technical Analysis of Financial Markets — John J. Murphy
• 2.Japanese Candlestick Charting Techniques — Steve Nison
• 3.Technical Analysis of Stock Trends — Edwards & Magee
• 4.Beyond Candlesticks — Steve Nison
• 5.Point and Figure Charting — Thomas J. Dorsey
• 6.The Complete Guide to Renko Charting — K. V. S. M. Murthy
• 7.Mind Over Markets — James Dalton
• 8.Trading Price Action Trends — Al Brooks
• 9.Quatick Charts API Documentation — Quatick Documentation