Timeframes

The timeframe is how much time each candle summarises. On a daily chart every candle covers one day; on a 1-hour chart, one hour. A single daily candle is really twenty-four 1-hour candles compressed into one shape.

The same market can look completely different on different timeframes. A move that looks like a sharp sell-off on the 15-minute chart may be nothing more than a small lower wick on the daily. That is why you must always know which timeframe you are looking at, and keep your reading consistent with it.

"Which timeframe is the correct one?" is the wrong question; they are different resolutions of the same data, like photographs taken from different distances. The timeframe never tells you which view is the true one — only at what scale you are looking. As a habit, reading the bigger timeframe first and then zooming into the smaller one keeps confusion down.