Time intervals: how much market activity each candle shows

A time interval (or timeframe) tells the chart how much time, or how much trading, goes into one bar or candle. Pick 1 day, and each candle shows one day of trading. Pick 5 minutes, and each candle shows five minutes.

CONTENTS:

What one candle tells you
How to choose an interval
Customize the menu
Set a custom interval
The last candle and trading hours
Ticks and ranges

What one candle tells you

Each candle shows four prices for its interval: open, high, low, and close. On a 4-hour chart, every candle shows where the price started, how high and how low it went, and where it ended during those four hours.

How to choose an interval

Click the interval menu in the top toolbar of the chart and pick one of the options:

Ticks: 1, 10, 100, 1000.
Seconds: 1, 5, 10, 15, 30, 45.
Minutes: 1, 2, 3, 5, 10, 15, 30, 45.
Hours: 1, 2, 3, 4.
Days: 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, 3, 6, and 12 months.
Ranges: 1, 10, 100, 1000.

Short intervals, like seconds and minutes, suit scalping and day trading. Hourly and daily intervals are popular for swing trading. Weekly and monthly intervals help long-term investors see the big picture.

Click the star next to an interval to add it to your favorites. Favorite intervals appear right on the top toolbar, so you can switch with one click.
Click the remove button next to the star to hide an interval you don't use.

Set a custom interval

Need something that isn't in the list, like 205 minutes, 82 days, or 37 weeks? Open the interval menu and click Add custom interval.

Even faster: click the chart and type a number of minutes, for example 45, then press Enter. This works for up to 1,440 minutes (24 hours).

The last candle and trading hours

The right-most candle may not be complete yet. While the market is open, it keeps changing with every new trade. Crypto markets trade 24/7, so the last candle always updates.

When the exchange is closed, the last candle shows the final prices of the most recent session and stays the same until the market opens again. For example, Nasdaq trades from 9:30 to 16:00 New York time, so after 16:00 a META chart won't change until 9:30 the next trading day.

Trading hours can also make the last candle of a session shorter. On a 45-minute chart of META, candles start at 9:30, 10:15, 11:00, and so on. The last one starts at 15:30 but the market closes at 16:00, so it holds only 30 minutes of trading.

To see when a candle started, move your cursor over it. The date and time appear at the bottom of the chart. Add the interval to that time to get the end: a 45-minute candle that starts at 11:45 ends at 12:30.

Ticks and ranges

Tick intervals are based on trades, not time. A tick is one trade, so on a 100-tick chart, a new candle starts after every 100 trades. Busy markets form candles faster.
Range intervals switch your chart to the Range chart type. A new bar starts only when the price moves by a set amount, which helps filter out market noise.