Bodies, Wicks & the Doji Family
The single sessions that offer no trade of their own — and quietly decide what every pattern around them means.
Why these are not labs
Each of the 29 pattern labs ends in something you can place an order against: a level to enter at, a level to be wrong at, a level to leave at. Nothing on this page does. A session that finishes where it opened is not an instruction to buy or sell — it is a report that the argument ended in a draw, and only the surrounding chart decides whether that matters.
Think of them as the alphabet rather than the words. Flatten a Morning Star's middle session and you have a doji. Shrink the second candle of a Harami and you have a small body. Once these read on sight, the 29 patterns stop being shapes to memorise and start being sentences.
Reading the Body
The body is the verdict; everything else is the argument
Open to close is the only part of a session that records a result. The wicks tell you what was tried and abandoned along the way.
Without volume, body length is the closest thing
Spot FX reports no central volume figure, so the length of the body has to carry that job: long means committed, short means tentative. A stand-in, not a reading.
Bodies that shorten are a warning before price gives one
When each successive session in an advance closes a little nearer its open, the buying is thinning out while the chart still looks healthy.
Skimming past the wicks
Traders who read only bodies throw away half the session. Where a wick reaches, and how far, is where the market turned buyers or sellers away.
Wicks
Where price was refused
A wick is a record of ground the market took and then gave back. Two things about it carry information: how far it reaches, and which end of the session it hangs from. Together they locate the exact prices that were rejected.
Treat that as a standing instruction rather than a nicety: reading wicks carelessly is the single most common way traders lose money on a candle chart, and it is the half of the session most people skim past.
- What happened
- Price dropped into those levels during the session and could not hold there.
- Why
- Offers ran out down there and buyers took the discount, carrying price back up before the close.
- In a decline
- These appearing while a market falls is a sign the sellers are running low on ammunition.
- What happened
- Price was carried up into those levels and then sold back down out of them.
- Why
- Whoever bought up there could not keep the position funded once real supply appeared.
- In a rally
- It cancels out most of the strength a green session would otherwise appear to show.
- First
- Not one session with an upper wick but a run of them, back to back.
- Second
- They all stall within a few pips of each other. That shared ceiling is the level.
- Third
- Their bodies are getting shorter as the run goes on.
- Together
- A chart still printing higher highs and higher lows, but leaving a wick overhead every session, is an advance to be taking money out of.
- Strongest
- When those overhead wicks are also getting longer at a ceiling the chart already respects, this stops being an exit and becomes a reason to be short.
The Lines
7 forms- Shape
- Open and close finish close together, leaving a stubby body with visible wicks on both sides. Green or red changes nothing.
- Reads as
- Whatever move walked into this session stopped making progress in it.
- Why
- Both sides spent the day pushing and neither had anything to show for it by the bell.
- As a level
- A single one marks nothing. It takes three or more bottoming out around the same price before the level is worth drawing on a chart.
- Watch
- A run of them flattens a decline rather than turning it. A flat market can simply be working off an oversold reading before carrying on down.
- Shape
- The close lands on the open, or within a hair of it, so there is a cross where the body should be. It has to turn up inside an existing move to mean anything.
- Reads as
- Stalemate. The move has run out of fuel and a correction is now on the table.
- Why
- A full session of trading that finished exactly where it started is the plainest picture of a standoff a single candle can give you.
- In practice
- Having no position is not a reason to take one here. It is a reason to let the next session break the tie first.
- Shape
- Open and close pinned together around the middle, with unusually long wicks reaching away on both sides.
- Reads as
- Direction has been mislaid altogether.
- Why
- The market covered an enormous distance in both directions and still finished the day on its opening price. Plenty of movement, no decision.
- Shape
- The open, the low and the close all land together at the bottom of the range, so the entire session stands above them as one tall wick.
- Reads as
- A top may be forming. Every pip won during the day was surrendered before the close.
- As a level
- The tip of that overhead wick is the price to carry forward as a ceiling.
- Related
- What a Shooting Star turns into once the body vanishes entirely — the same refusal, with nothing left of it.
- Shape
- The open, the high and the close all land together at the top of the range, with the whole session hanging beneath them as one long wick.
- Reads as
- A bottom may be forming. The selling was undone in full before the close.
- As a level
- The bottom of that hanging wick is the price to carry forward as a floor.
- Related
- What a Hammer turns into once the body vanishes entirely.
- Shape
- Wicks running a long way out on both sides of a short body. The colour is beside the point.
- Reads as
- Whatever was driving the market has gone slack.
- Note
- It keeps a body, so strictly it is not a doji — but read it the same way, and give it more weight than an ordinary spinning top.
- Shape
- Every price of the session is the same, so the whole candle collapses into a single flat dash with nothing above or below it.
- Reads as
- Nobody turned up. On an FX chart this normally points at a dead hour or a gap in the feed rather than at anything the market is thinking.
- Source
- Added here so the doji family is complete. It falls outside the course material this page draws on.
When a Doji Counts
Something is already under way
Reversal signals need a thing to reverse. That is why the criteria open by asking what the market was doing beforehand, not what the candle looks like.
It lands at the far edge of the move
The one to act on prints at a fresh extreme, where the trend has just run out of room rather than paused in the middle of its range.
The market has been rising
These call tops more reliably than bottoms. Selling is driven by fear and travels faster, so a falling market can shrug off a stalemate session and keep going.
The chart is going sideways
Inside a range it is noise. A market with no direction producing a candle that reports no direction has added nothing you did not already know.
You have not tested it on your own timeframe
Which of these signals earn their keep varies by chart interval. That is settled by checking them on the timeframe you actually trade, not by assuming.
You are flat and itching to act
The message is that the move in progress is tired. That justifies defending a position or booking profit — it does not by itself justify opening one.
Turning One Into a Level
TechniqueThe part most traders skip
A doji usually gets read as a one-off hint and then forgotten the moment the next candle prints. Its longer-lasting use is structural: a stalemate at the top of an advance marks a price the market reached for and turned down, and that price keeps mattering long after the session itself has scrolled off the screen.
Measure from the doji and the session next to it
Not the doji on its own. Take whichever of the two reached higher, wick tip included.
Treat the gap between them as a band
Levels are areas. Reducing one to a single price is false precision, and noise will stop you out of it.
Demand a close beyond the band, not a poke through it
Trading through a level intraday proves nothing — that happens constantly. Only a session that settles beyond it counts, and at that point the bearish reading is void.
Place the stop beyond the next band up
Once price does settle above, protection belongs above the following layer — not at the band you have just watched give way.
Run the whole thing upside down for floors
A stalemate at the base of a decline marks a price the market tested and declined to go under. Same construction, same close-based test, mirrored.
Targets & Confirmation
Where a candle stops being useful
A candle will not tell you how far. These are timing tools — they mark the point a move begins, hesitates or ends, and say nothing at all about the distance it will cover. A signal that supposedly "failed" has usually been measured against a target it never offered.
Distance comes from the chart's own structure: the last meaningful high if you are long, the last meaningful low if you are short.
A turning point has a lower session on each side
A high only qualifies if the sessions immediately before and after it both printed lower highs. That is the entire test — and it is why one can never be confirmed until a session after it has closed.
Levels stack into bands
The distance from the first ceiling to the second is one band, the second to the third another. Work against areas rather than single prices.
Settled through, not poked through
The rule that repeats everywhere on this page: a level gives way when a session closes beyond it. Price visiting the other side mid-session is not the event.
A wider base carries a move further
Markets lifting out of a long sideways stretch tend to travel further than those springing off a narrow one. Watch for sessions that lengthen as the move builds.
Give up on your own target when the chart says so
If a ceiling starts assembling below where you were aiming — shortening bodies, wicks piling up overhead — that target may be out of reach. Trade the chart in front of you, not the plan you wrote before it existed.
Down is quicker than up
Declines tend to cover ground faster than advances. An equally clean signal does not imply an equal pace in both directions.
Using Them to Get Out
A stalemate session while you are long is a cue to bank it
Waiting for a full bearish reversal pattern before leaving a winning trade gives back more than it saves. The move losing its footing is reason enough, and this is the earliest sign of it.
A candle describes the session you are in
It reports what is happening now. An indicator built on an average of past sessions is structurally obliged to tell you later.
Several in a row, each topping out lower
One is a note of caution. A sequence of them, none managing a new high, describes a trend that has already finished regardless of where price sits.
Where These Turn Up in the Labs
| Line | Pattern it forms part of | Its role there |
|---|---|---|
| Short body | +HR Bullish Harami · −HR Bear Harami | The second session, swallowed whole by the body before it |
| Short body | +H Hammer · −HM Hanging Man | Sits at the top of the range with the long wick hanging beneath it |
| Short body | −S Shooting Star · +IH Inverted Hammer | Sits at the base of the range under a wick at least twice its height |
| Doji | +MS Morning Star · −ES Evening Star | The session in the middle — the pause dividing one trend from the next |
| Dragonfly doji | +H Hammer | The same idea with the body reduced to nothing |
| Gravestone doji | −S Shooting Star | The same idea with the body reduced to nothing |
| Long lower wick | +H Hammer · −HM Hanging Man | The feature that defines both — one shape, read by where it lands |
| Long upper wick | −S Shooting Star · +IH Inverted Hammer | The refused advance — again one shape with two readings |
| Shortening bodies | +3S Three White Soldiers · −3C Three Black Crows | Bodies that shrink across the run warn the push is running down |
Test Yourself
12 questions
Next: how to practise these
Reading a single session is the first half of the job. The practice guide covers the second half: the order to learn the patterns in, what a practice session looks like, how long it honestly takes, and what to write down — with a rep tracker, a log template and a calendar builder.
About this reference
This page covers standard Japanese candlestick concepts, drawn from published trading literature and from notes taken during FX training sessions.
The explanations, headings, diagrams and structure on this page were written for CandleEdgeLab. No text, table, chart, illustration or reference card from any third-party book, handout or course is reproduced here. Pattern names such as doji, dragonfly, gravestone, rickshaw man and spinning top are long-standing terms from Japanese candlestick charting and belong to no single author. CandleEdgeLab is an independent project and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or associated with any candlestick author, educator or training company.
These sessions are context, not trade setups. They carry no entry, stop or target, which is why they sit here rather than among the 29 pattern labs.
Educational material only. Nothing on this page is financial advice or a recommendation to trade.