Bullish Candle

A bullish candle is a candlestick whose close is above its open, meaning price finished that period higher than it started.

KCM Academy Editorial Team
Editorial policy
Last updated 27 October 2026

A bullish candle is a candlestick whose close is above its open: price finished the period higher than it started. The body runs from the open at the bottom to the close at the top. It is the opposite of a bearish candle. Bullish here is a fact about one finished period.

How do you read a bullish candle?

On a bullish candle the open is the bottom of the body and the close is the top, because price finished the period higher. The wicks show how far price travelled beyond the body: the upper wick reaches the high and the lower wick reaches the low. The table maps each part.

Part Where it is on a bullish candle
Open Bottom of the body
Close Top of the body
Upper wick From the close up to the high
Lower wick From the open down to the low

A long body with short wicks means price closed well above its open, near the high. A short body with long wicks means price moved both ways and still closed slightly higher. Body and wick reading is covered in how to read a candlestick chart. The wider meaning of the word, for a market or a trader's view, is on the bullish vs bearish page.

A green bullish candle with its body running from the open at the bottom to the close at the top, an upper wick to the high and a lower wick to the low, labelled with the example prices 1.1000, 1.1040, 1.0990 and 1.1030
On a bullish candle the open is the bottom of the body and the close is the top, because price finished higher.

Worked example: bullish candle on EURUSD

An H1 candle opens at 1.1000, trades down to 1.0990, up to 1.1040, and closes at 1.1030.

Measure Calculation Result
Direction 1.1030 > 1.1000 Bullish
Body 1.1030 − 1.1000 30 pips
Upper wick 1.1040 − 1.1030 10 pips
Lower wick 1.1000 − 1.0990 10 pips
Range 1.1040 − 1.0990 50 pips

At 0.10 lot, about $1 per pip on EURUSD, a long position held for that whole hour would have moved about $30 in its favour by the close, after being about $10 against it at the low. The same candle would have cost a short position the same amounts in reverse.

What should you check on a bullish candle?

Before reading a bullish candle, check where it closed, the higher timeframe and your chart's colour settings. Each can change what the candle tells you: the close shows who held control at the end, a larger timeframe can tell a different story, and colours differ between charts. The details are below.

How do you see bullish candles in MetaTrader 5?

In MetaTrader 5, press Alt+2 for candlesticks; bullish candles use the bull candle body colour, set in chart properties (F8). That colour is a user setting. Candles are built from Bid prices unless market depth is available, and Ctrl+D opens the Data Window with each candle's exact open and close.

What do traders often get wrong about bullish candles?

A common mistake is treating several bullish candles in a row as proof that price must keep rising. A run of bullish candles describes what has already happened. Traders set the stop and position size before entering, whatever the streak looks like; the position size calculator does the arithmetic.

Sources

Learn it properly in the full lesson: Candlestick Chart: What It Is and How to Read One

Practise what you learned

Open an account to use MetaTrader 5. Start on a demo account before risking real money.

Open Account