This chart should make more sense. This chart is created by taking the closing price each day, and plotting it according to the date. A line connects all the closing prices together. Beneath the line, bars show the number of shares that traded hands during that day.
This chart is simple, which is good, but it has some limitations. The main limitation is that is chart only looks at closing prices. You see, there is much more to a stock price than just the close. When the stock exchange opens at 9:30 in New York, or Toronto, the first shares that trade hands are done so at the opening price. Secondly, there is the high and low price for the day, or the extreme points the stock reaches throughout the trading day. The chart above does not take these other pieces of data into account.
Naturally, analysts figured that it would be a better idea to look at the opening price, the low price, the high price, and the closing price to gain a better understanding of the stocks behaviour, which brings us to the next chart.
