Green or red?

Colour says one thing only: the direction. Close above the open and the candle is drawn green; close below it and the candle is red. That is all. Colour does not say how decisively price was carried; the length of the body does. Two candles of the same green can describe two entirely different periods: one a firm carry from open to close, the other a hesitant period that ended a hair's breadth higher.

The reading order on a chart is fixed: direction from the colour first, conviction from the body second. A long green body is a decisive up period, a short green body is a period in which neither side gained the upper hand; for red, the mirror image holds. The most common beginner mistake is to read colour as strength — five short green candles in a row are not "stronger" than a single long green one, and the number of green candles is not a measure of anything.

One more warning: colour is a convention, not a law of nature. On some exchanges a rising candle is drawn red, and some screens use filled and hollow bodies instead of colour at all. So do not memorise a colour; read where the close finished relative to the open. Colour tells you the direction, never the strength — and even the direction is only that period's, not the next candle's.