07 — THE CANDLESTICK STORY

One of the most interesting developments came from Japan.

Japanese rice markets developed sophisticated methods of recording and analyzing price behavior.

Munehisa Homma is traditionally credited with the development of Japanese candlestick analysis in the 18th century, although historians note that the exact development of modern candlestick charts is more complicated than the popular story suggests.

The important idea was not simply the shape of a candle.

It was the attempt to understand:

Price + Time + Human behavior

A candle gives four basic pieces of information:

Open → High → Low → Close

And suddenly price movement became visual.