Chart Types — Complete Guide

A chart type is nothing more than a decision about how to draw the same numbers. The trades that happened on NSE:RELIANCE between 09:15 and 15:30 IST are a fixed historical fact; a candlestick chart, a line chart and a Renko chart are three different ways of drawing that one fact. None of them adds information and none of them is more 'true' than the others. What they change is which parts of the record are emphasised and which are thrown away — and since throwing the right things away is most of what analysis is, the choice matters more than beginners expect.

TradingView's 21 chart types divide into two families. **Time-based charts** print a new candle or bar every fixed interval, whether or not anything happened. On a 15-minute chart of NSE:TCS you get a new candle at 09:30, 09:45 and 10:00 regardless of whether the stock moved ₹40 or ₹0.40 in between. Candlesticks, Bars, Line, Area, Baseline and Heikin Ashi all work this way. **Price-based charts** ignore the clock entirely and print only when price travels a set distance. Renko, Point & Figure, Kagi, Line Break and Range bars belong here. A quiet hour on such a chart produces literally nothing, which is either exactly what you want or a serious loss of context, depending on what you are looking for.

There is a third axis worth naming: how much of each period the chart shows you. A Line chart keeps only the closing price and discards the open, the high and the low. A candlestick keeps all four — Open, High, Low and Close, usually abbreviated OHLC. A Volume Footprint chart keeps considerably more than four, breaking a single candle open to show how much traded at each individual price inside it. Moving up that ladder gives you more detail and more to misread; moving down gives you clarity and blind spots. Experienced chartists move deliberately between levels rather than settling permanently on one.

For most Indian retail traders the honest answer is that candlesticks on NSE cash and F&O charts will carry you a very long way, and that the exotic types are worth understanding mainly so you know what you are choosing not to use. The sections below work through each family: the standard OHLC types, the closing-price types, the noise-filtering Japanese and price-based types (including Renko and Range bars), and finally the order-flow types like Volume Footprint that require both a Premium plan and real-time exchange data.

Japanese Candlesticks are the undisputed global standard for modern trading. They pack the maximum amount of information—Open, High, Low, and Close (OHLC)—into an intuitively readable format that immediately conveys the session's battle between buyers and sellers.

Hollow Candles offer a slight variation: they use solid vs. hollow bodies to differentiate between sessions where the close was higher than the open, versus sessions where the close was higher than the previous day's close. This nuanced difference helps traders identify weak rallies.

Traditional Bars contain the exact same OHLC data as candlesticks but emphasize the closing price (the right tick) over the body. Institutional traders often prefer Bars because they strip away the emotional bias created by large colored candlestick bodies.

When analyzing massive historic trends on a Weekly or Monthly timeframe, Candlesticks can actually provide too much information, causing 'analysis paralysis' from intraday volatility wicks.

Line and Area charts solve this by plotting only the closing prices. Because closing prices are the most important data point of the day (representing the final consensus of market participants), Line charts offer the purest visualization of the underlying macro trend.

Baseline charts take this a step further by allowing you to define a specific anchor price (e.g., the pre-COVID high). The chart will color the area green when trading above the baseline, and red when trading below it, providing instant visual context of relative performance.

This category contains advanced chart types designed specifically to filter out 'market noise'—meaningless sideways chop that triggers false breakouts.

Heikin Ashi (Japanese for 'average bar') modifies traditional candlesticks by averaging the current and prior session's data. The result is a profoundly smooth chart where strong uptrends are painted as a continuous series of green candles with no lower wicks, making it incredibly easy to ride a trend without getting shaken out.

Renko, Kagi, and Point & Figure charts go a step further: they completely eliminate Time from the X-axis. A new Renko 'brick' is only drawn when the price moves a predefined amount (e.g., 10 points). If the price chops sideways for 5 hours within a 9-point range, the Renko chart will not draw anything, effectively deleting the chop from your screen.

The highest echelon of TradingView chart types is reserved for Premium and Expert users. These charts integrate Order Flow and Volume Distribution directly into the price structure, revealing the 'why' behind the price movement.

A Volume Footprint chart physically cracks open a candlestick to show you exactly how many contracts were bought at the Ask (aggressive buyers) vs sold at the Bid (aggressive sellers) at every single price tick inside that candle. This allows scalpers to spot 'imbalances' and trapped traders in real-time.

Time Price Opportunity (TPO), also known as Market Profile, generates a statistical bell curve of where price spent the most time during a session. It highlights the Point of Control (POC) and Value Areas—critical zones where institutional players are accumulating or distributing inventory.

Just like timeframes, you don't need to constantly open the Chart Type dropdown menu. You can pin your most frequently used chart types directly to your top toolbar for one-click access.

Simply open the Chart Type selector, hover over your preferred styles (e.g., Candles, Line, Heikin Ashi), and click the Star (★) icon next to them.