Our chart tab offers two views of the same data. Understanding what each one shows — and what neither shows — takes about ten minutes and will make you meaningfully better at deciding when to convert.
The line chart
The simplest view. Each point is one price for one period — typically the closing rate for that day — and the points are joined. What you get is a clean picture of direction and range over the window you select.
Line charts are the right choice when your question is "roughly where has this been lately, and is now toward the high or low end of that?" For most people converting money for a real-world purpose, that is the only question a chart needs to answer.
The candlestick chart
Each candle summarises one period using four numbers, conventionally abbreviated OHLC:
| Value | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Open | The rate at the start of the period |
| High | The highest rate reached during it |
| Low | The lowest rate reached |
| Close | The rate at the end of the period |
The body of the candle spans open to close. The thin lines above and below — the wicks or shadows — reach to the high and the low. Colour indicates direction: a candle that closed higher than it opened is conventionally shown in one colour, and one that closed lower in another.
The practical advantage over a line chart is that you can see intra-period movement. A day that opened and closed at almost the same level but had long wicks in both directions was a volatile day, and a line chart would have shown you a flat, calm-looking point.
Reading candles without over-reading them
- Long body, short wicks — the rate moved decisively in one direction and stayed there.
- Short body, long wicks — the rate travelled in both directions and finished near where it started. Indecision, or a day driven by news that was subsequently absorbed.
- A long wick on one side only — the rate reached a level and was pushed back from it.
- A run of candles in the same colour — a sustained move, which tells you about the past and nothing reliable about tomorrow.
Choosing a time window
The window changes the story more than most people realise. A pair can look like it is in freefall on a seven-day chart and perfectly stable on a ninety-day one. Both charts are accurate.
- 7 days — useful only if you are converting within days. Mostly noise.
- 30 days — a reasonable default for a decision you are making this month.
- 90 days — the best of the four for judging whether the current rate is toward the high or low end of a recent range.
Before drawing a conclusion, look at the vertical axis. A chart that does not start at zero — most rate charts do not, and should not — will make a small movement look dramatic. Check whether the range on that axis represents a meaningful percentage or a rounding error.
What the stats below the chart tell you
The period high, low and net change are more decision-relevant than the shape of the line, because they let you answer a concrete question: where does today's rate sit within the recent range?
If the current rate is close to the period high and you are selling that currency, you are converting at a relatively good moment by recent standards. If it is close to the low and your transfer can wait, waiting may be reasonable. That is the honest limit of what a chart supports.
A currency chart contains no information about the future. Patterns that look meaningful in hindsight appear constantly in random data, and exchange rates respond to information that has not been published yet — central bank decisions, inflation prints, political events. Professional forecasters with far more data are wrong routinely. Use charts to judge a range and size a decision, never to predict a direction.
Turning a chart into a decision
A workable process for anyone converting money for a real purpose rather than trading:
- Look at 90 days and note the high and the low. That is your realistic range.
- Locate today within it. Upper third, middle, lower third — that level of precision is enough.
- Decide what you would accept. Pick a rate that is good but plausible given the range, not the best number on the chart.
- Set an alert at that level from the alerts tab rather than checking daily.
- Set a deadline too. If the alert has not triggered by the date you actually need the money, convert anyway.
- Consider splitting large amounts across two or three conversions over a few weeks. This guarantees you will not get the best rate — and guarantees you will not get the worst one either, which is the more valuable outcome.
CurrencyLook's charts use daily reference rates published by the European Central Bank. Two consequences worth knowing:
There are no weekends. Reference rates are published once per business day, so Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays are simply absent from the series rather than drawn flat.
Our candles are grouped, not daily. A single published rate per day has no high or low to draw, so candlestick view groups days into periods — three days on the 30-day chart, a week on the 90-day chart. Open and close are the first and last published rates in the group; high and low are the extremes within it. That is a real candle, just at a coarser resolution than a trading platform would show. Candlestick view is unavailable on the 7 and 14 day charts for the same reason.
Coverage is about 30 major currencies. Where we don't have verified history for a pair, the chart says so instead of showing an estimate. Our converter still covers 160+ currencies for current rates.
The short version
- Line charts answer "where has this been?" — usually the only question you need.
- Candles add intra-period movement: body is open-to-close, wicks are high and low.
- The time window shapes the story; check the axis before reacting to a dramatic-looking line.
- Charts describe the past. Use them to set a realistic target and a deadline, not a prediction.
See the chart for your pair Candlestick and line views over 7, 14, 30 and 90 days, with period high, low and net change.
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