Chartists do, however, differ as to which charting method they consider to be most effective. In this section, we will explore the three basic charting techniques. This is the type of chart that we first learned to construct in elementary school. Many securities analysts use line charts to show the closing prices of an index or a particular stock over a period of days or months. This is the simplest charting technique used by technical analysts.
Price is indicated on the chart's vertical axis, and time is indicated on the horizontal axis.
The market or price movement for a given session is represented on one line. The vertical part of the line shows the high and the low prices at which the stock traded or the market moved. A short horizontal tick on the vertical line indicates the price or level at which the stock or market closed. This charting method uses the boxes on a graph to record the price movements of a stock. When the price rises up, the increase is depicted by a series of x's in a column of boxes.