Publication #200

My @TradingView profile celebrating 200 publications

When I published my first idea on TradingView, I wasn't trying reach any milestone. I simply wanted to better understand financial markets.

200 publications later, writing has become one of the greatest teachers in my trading journey. Every article forced me to question assumptions, verify information, revisit economic principles, and explain complex ideas as clearly as possible.

In many ways, these publications have been less about teaching and more about learning in public.

To everyone who has read, commented, challenged ideas, or supported @currencynerd thank you. Your curiosity has made every publication worthwhile.

I would also like to thank @TradingView for creating a platform where traders, investors, analysts, and researchers from around the world can exchange ideas and continue learning together.

Publication number 200 is not meaningful because of the number itself, but because of everything the journey has taught me.

Looking back, one lesson stands above all others:

The chart is not where the market begins.

Every candlestick we analyse is the final result of a much larger process. Before a candle appears on TradingView, information is processed, participants make decisions, orders enter the market, transactions occur, and price is recorded.

So instead of celebrating this milestone with another strategy or indicator, I wanted to explore something more fundamental:

How does a financial market transform millions of independent decisions into a single candlestick?

The Market Exists for One Purpose

Every financial market—stocks, bonds, foreign exchange, commodities, or cryptocurrencies—serves several functions, but one of the most important is:

Price discovery.

Price discovery is the continuous process through which buyers and sellers determine the current value of an asset through their willingness to transact.

At its foundation, every market is an auction.

Buyers compete to purchase at acceptable prices. Sellers compete to sell at acceptable prices. The interaction between both sides determines where transactions occur.

Many traders view charts as the source of opportunities.

In reality, charts are records of transactions created by millions of decisions made by market participants.

A candlestick does not create price movement.

It is a visual summary of the activity that has already taken place.

From the Economy to a Candlestick


Every candle begins with information.

The Economic Environment

Markets continuously absorb new information.

Central banks influence expectations through interest rates, liquidity operations, and communication.

Governments affect economic conditions through fiscal policy, regulation, and borrowing.

Businesses provide information through earnings, while economic data such as inflation, employment, and GDP updates expectations about future conditions.

However, information itself does not create price.

It changes expectations.

Expectations influence decisions.

Decisions become orders.

The Participants

Financial markets bring together participants with different objectives, time horizons, and risk requirements.

Central banks operate to implement monetary policy and maintain financial stability.

Banks facilitate payments, lending, foreign exchange transactions, financing, and client execution while managing their own risks.

Corporations use markets to hedge business exposure, manage currency risk, and raise capital.

Institutional investors such as pension funds, insurance companies, and asset managers allocate capital according to long-term objectives.

Hedge funds and proprietary firms seek returns through discretionary, quantitative, macro, and arbitrage strategies.

Market makers and liquidity providers continuously quote buying and selling prices, helping markets function while managing inventory risk.

Retail traders participate with smaller capital but often greater flexibility and speed.

Different participants.

Different objectives.

Different time horizons.

Yet every participant eventually reaches the same point:

A decision must become an order.

Decisions Become Orders

Markets only respond when views become executable actions.

Whether it comes from a global institution or an individual trader, every market opinion must eventually become an instruction to buy or sell.

Some orders seek immediate execution.

Others wait for specific prices.

Some are placed for investment.

Others for hedging or speculation.

The purpose behind the order may differ, but price discovery depends on one thing:

The interaction between executable supply and demand.

Markets do not move because someone has an opinion.

They move when participants are willing to transact at different prices.

Where Orders Meet

Once submitted, orders must reach a marketplace where they can interact with other participants.

In exchange-traded markets such as listed stocks and futures, orders are sent to a central exchange where a matching engine pairs compatible buyers and sellers.

When both sides agree on a price, a transaction occurs.

Foreign exchange operates differently because spot FX is an over-the-counter market without one central global exchange.

Instead, banks, electronic communication networks, liquidity providers, and brokers connect participants across a global network of prices.

Although the structure differs, the principle remains the same:

A new traded price is established when buyers and sellers agree and a transaction occurs.

Orders waiting in the market represent potential demand or supply, but they do not create a completed market price until execution takes place.

That transaction becomes the next piece of the continuous price discovery process.

From Executed Transactions to the Candlestick You See

Once buyers and sellers agree and a transaction occurs, the market has created the information that eventually becomes the chart.

But a trade does not instantly become a candlestick.

Before a candle appears on TradingView, executed transactions must first be recorded, organised, and transformed into market data.

This is the part many traders rarely consider.

They analyse candles every day, yet few think about the process that creates them.

A candlestick is not a prediction.

It is a compressed record of completed market activity.

From Transactions to Market Data

Every executed transaction contains important information:

The price where buyers and sellers agreed, The time the transaction occurred and the amount exchanged

In many markets, these individual price updates are captured as tick data.

During active periods, thousands of price updates can occur as participants continuously negotiate value.

Each update reflects another moment where supply and demand interact.

However, displaying every individual transaction would make a normal trading chart impossible to interpret.

The solution is aggregation.

How Candles Are Created

Trading platforms organise market activity into time intervals and compress that information into four values:

Open-The first recorded price during the period. High-The highest recorded price reached during the period. Low-The lowest recorded price reached during the period. Close-The final recorded price during the period.


Together, these values form the candlestick.

The body shows the relationship between the opening and closing prices.

The wicks show the extremes reached before buyers and sellers found temporary agreement.

Behind every candle is a sequence of decisions, orders, liquidity, and executed transactions.

The candle is simply the final representation.

Why Candles Can Differ Between Platforms

Many traders eventually notice that the same asset can sometimes display slightly different candles across platforms.

The reason is that market data depends on market structure and data sources.

In centralised markets such as listed stocks and many futures contracts, prices are recorded from an exchange where transactions occur in one primary marketplace.

Foreign exchange is different.

Spot FX is an over-the-counter market without one central global exchange. Instead, banks, liquidity providers, electronic communication networks, and brokers contribute prices from different sources.

Because of this, different brokers may display small variations in:

Highs and lows, Spreads, Volume information and short-term price movements

The chart reflects the data source behind it, but no single platform represents the entire global FX market.

Liquidity: Where Price Finds Its Next Level

A common misunderstanding is that price rises simply because there are more buyers than sellers.

Every executed trade requires both.

For every buyer, there is a seller.

The more important question is:

At what prices are participants willing to transact?

Liquidity determines how easily buying and selling pressure can be absorbed without significant price movement.

In highly liquid markets, large orders can often be executed with limited impact because many participants are available on both sides.

In thinner markets, even smaller orders can move price because fewer participants are willing to transact at current levels.

This is why economic announcements often create sharp moves.

Information changes expectations.

Expectations change positioning.

Positioning creates orders.

Orders interact with available liquidity.

Price adjusts.

Why Volatility Appears

Volatility is the result of changing expectations and changing participation.

When new information enters the market, participants reassess value.

Some increase exposure.

Others reduce risk.

Some change forecasts.

Others search for opportunities.

This constant repricing creates movement.

Quiet markets often reflect greater agreement around current prices.

Volatile markets often reflect disagreement.

The larger the disagreement, the more aggressively participants compete for liquidity.

Reading the Market Beyond the Candle

For many traders, the chart is where analysis begins.

They see a candle and immediately search for patterns, indicators, or signals.

But the candle is only the final stage of a much larger process.

Behind every wick is a record of changing supply and demand.

Behind every breakout is a shift in expectations and positioning.

Behind every major move is a chain of decisions made by market participants.

Technical analysis becomes more powerful when traders understand what they are actually analysing.

They are not simply analysing candles.

They are analysing the behaviour of participants as recorded through price.

The Complete Journey of a Candlestick

A single candle represents the final stage of a much larger process:


The next time you open a chart, remember:

You are not looking at the market itself.

You are looking at the footprint left behind by every decision, order, and transaction that happened before that candle existed.

Key Insight

The market is not a chart.

The chart is the language used to record the market.

Every candle is a compressed story of information, participation, liquidity, and transactions.

Understanding this changes the way traders view price.

Instead of only asking:

"What pattern is forming?"

A better question is:

"What decisions from market participants created this price?"

put together by : Pako Phutietsile as @currencynerd