Supply, Demand, and Price Action

Many technicians use the open, high, low and close when analyzing the price action of a security. There is information to be gleaned from each bit of information. Separately, these will not be able to tell much. However, taken together, the open, high, low and close reflect forces of supply and demand.

The annotated example below shows a stock that opened with a gap up. Before the open, the number of buy orders exceeded the number of sell orders and the price was raised to attract more sellers. Demand was brisk from the start. The intraday high reflects the strength of demand (buyers). The intraday low reflects the availability of supply (sellers). The close represents the final price agreed upon by the buyers and the sellers. In this case, the close is well below the high and much closer to the low. This tells us that even though demand (buyers) was strong during the day, supply (sellers) ultimately prevailed and forced the price back down. Even after this selling pressure, the close remained above the open. By looking at price action over an extended period of time, we can see the battle between supply and demand unfold. In its most basic form, higher prices reflect increased demand and lower prices reflect increased supply.