I've been looking at the markets for Bitcoin recently (specifically MtGox, but I suspect this applies to all markets) and I've been a little confused by the terminology. I can take guesses at what most of the terms means, but I'd like to be certain.
The MtGox ticker shows six pieces of information, what do they all mean?
high
low
vol
buy
sell
last
Well, MtGox treating of some of these values differs from commonly used in real stock/forex markets. This can especially be seen on its "japanese candlesticks chart". Here's the common meaning:
"high" value (not necessarily price) - highest value in given interval
"low" value - lowest value in the interval
"open" value - value at the beginning of the interval
"close" value - value at the end of the interval
In MtGox, the intervals seem to be 24 hours long, but their beginning and end are not clear. I think it's from midnight to midnight, but time zone is not known.
Terms "open" and "close" originate from real world exchanges, which are often not working 24 hours a day, so they "open" and "close". So "open price" was originally "the price when the market opens".
It's common to have two separate charts - one for "bid" price and the other for "ask" price. I cannot remember which is which either, and distinguish them only by their value - if I want to sell, I will obviously need high price, and if I want to buy, I need low price.
"All time" chart at MtGox treats "open" and "close" values quite differently. First of all, it charts not current ask or bid prices, but prices of actual deals, which is uncommon in real world trading.
"open" price at mtGox chart is the price during first deal in the interval
"close" price at mtGox chart is the price of the last deal in the interval
In real candlestick charts "close" price always equals "open" price of the next interval. At mtGox chart it's not the case, so it must look "broken" to people used to FX trading.