Most brokers provide a charting package with its trading platform to allow traders to view historical currency exchange rates.
 
Line Charts
The line chart is the most basic type of chart used in Forex. It is created by connecting a series of past closing prices together with a line. It is used to visualize the movement of a currency pair’s closing price over a given interval of time.

 

Bar Charts Bar chart – also named OHLC (open-high-low-close) chart – represents the price activity over a given period of time. It shows simultaneously the opening and closing prices and the highest and lowest prices traded over the time unit.

 

Each vertical line on the chart represents the price range (the highest and lowest prices) over one unit of time, e.g. one day or one hour.
 
Horizontal lines correspond to the opening price (e.g. for a daily bar chart, this would be the starting price for that day) on the left, and the closing price for that time period on the right.
 
Here is an example of a price bar:

Candlestick Charts
Candlestick chart is another forex chart displaying the same information as the bar chart, but using another visual aspect.

 

Candlesticks are usually composed of the body (shaded or not shaded), an upper shadow and a lower shadow.

The upper/lower shadows illustrate the highest and lowest traded prices of a pair during the time interval represented.
 
The body illustrates the opening and closing prices:
-  If the price closed higher than it opened, the body it empty (or transparent), with the opening price at the bottom of the body and the closing price at the top
 
-  If the price of the currency pair closed lower than it opened, the body is filled (or shaded), with the opening price at the top and the closing price at the bottom.