Quote from thstart:
I mean grouping candlesticks by 1, 5, 15 min etc. is arbitrary. The meaning of OHLC makes sense for Day, Week , Month but not make sense intra-day.
How does a day, week or month make more sense the something that is a multiple of a second?
Not all trading days are the same length, neither are weeks or months.
And, while their length may vary, they are all aggregates of a unit of time that is defined by a fixed number of oscillations of a certain atomic particle.
Besides, what happens if the stock market were to merge into a truly global 24/7 trading environment?
Wouldn't the daily begin and end times become just as arbitrary as you say intraday intervals are?
IMHO, I think you're putting too much emphasis on all this. All charts, bar, candle, P&F, etc. are nothing more than visual analogs for a stream of trade data.
What really matters is that the algorithm used to construct them not only produces them "correctly" but, that it can also graciously handle delayed openings, early closes and thinly traded instruments.