A candlestick is four numbers standing up
Pattern nicknames travel faster than arithmetic. In Farnham we spend a whole evening building candles from a table of figures so that a wick is no longer a mysterious thorn.
The table comes first
Before anyone sees a printed chart, they see ten rows: date, open, high, low, close. We plot those four prices as a vertical line with a small tick on the left for the open and a small tick on the right for the close — an old bar — then we fatten the stretch between open and close into a rectangle. That rectangle is the body. The rest is the wick.
People who have only met candles as cartoons are often surprised that the body can be tiny while the wick is long. That is not a 'signal'. It is a session in which the first and last trades sat close together and the traded extremes did not.
Colour is a courtesy, not a law
We print bodies in two greys rather than a loud green and red. Close above open is the lighter grey; close below is the darker. The point is to stop colour doing the thinking. A first-time learner who stares at green as if it were permission has already left the page.
Names we refuse in week two
Hammer, shooting star, engulfing, doji: the room will hear those words eventually, usually from a question. Helen answers by going back to the four numbers. If a nickname helps you remember a shape, use it at home. In the workshop, you describe the session in prices, then in swings, then — much later — in any nickname you still need.
If you want the version with an eraser at your elbow, the Chart Structure Workshop is the six-evening series, and the enquiry form is how a chair is reserved.