How to make color the wick portion of a candlestick stick using matplotlib?

Question

I\'m looking to make the wick portion of a candlestick stick black using matplotlib? I couldn\'t find any mention of it in the documentation, but I\'ve seen pictoral examples sh

Answer 1

As Paul says, A MCVE would assist people in helping you greatly.

However - just having a quick glance at the source code for the candlestick plotting in matplotlib shows that it uses the colorup/colordown parameter for both the candle and the wick.

So in order to get them to be different colours you will most likely need to reimplement the method and/or monkey patch the base implementation.

So in your plotting module, use something along the lines of:

from matplotlib.lines import Line2D
from matplotlib.patches import Rectangle


def blackwickcandlestick(ax, quotes, width=0.2, colorup='k', colordown='r',
                         alpha=1.0, ochl=True):

    OFFSET = width / 2.0

    lines = []
    patches = []
    for q in quotes:
        if ochl:
            t, open, close, high, low = q[:5]
        else:
            t, open, high, low, close = q[:5]

        if close >= open:
            color = colorup
            lower = open
            height = close - open
        else:
            color = colordown
            lower = close
            height = open - close

        vline = Line2D(
            xdata=(t, t), ydata=(low, high),
            color='k',      # This is the only line changed from the default implmentation
            linewidth=0.5,
            antialiased=True,
        )

        rect = Rectangle(
            xy=(t - OFFSET, lower),
            width=width,
            height=height,
            facecolor=color,
            edgecolor=color,
        )
        rect.set_alpha(alpha)

        lines.append(vline)
        patches.append(rect)
        ax.add_line(vline)
        ax.add_patch(rect)
    ax.autoscale_view()

    return lines, patches


import matplotlib.finance as mpl_finance

mpl_finance._candlestick = blackwickcandlestick

Then elsewhere in this module you can use the mpl_finance.candlestick_ohlc(...) plotting functions.