Candlestick formation · Bullish
What is it, in one line
A doji whose open and close sit at the top of the range.
Bullish · 1 candle · verdict: rule and thresholds below
A doji whose open and close sit at the top of the range. The engine checks the formation as an executable condition over open, high, low and close, with a trend filter applied before the count is kept.
Method
A candle with a negligible real body positioned at the very top of its range, leaving a long lower wick and almost no upper one. It is the limiting case of a hammer: the same silhouette with the body shrunk to nothing.
The traditional claim
Traditionally read as a bullish reversal signal, and usually said to carry more weight than an ordinary doji because of where the body sits.
How this detection is wrong
Overlaps with hammer by construction — a hammer with a small enough body satisfies both, and both detections are reported rather than arbitrated. The range floor exists because a near-flat illiquid bar also satisfies the body test.
Published so the count can be reproduced. Every figure below is a parameter of the rule, not a preference: change one and the occurrence count changes with it.
| Parameter | Meaning | Default |
|---|---|---|
| maxBodyPct | body, at most, as a share of the range | 0.05 |
| minLowerPct | lower wick, at least, as a share of the range | 0.6 |
| maxUpperPct | upper wick, at most, as a share of the range | 0.1 |
| minRangeAtr | bar range, at least, in ATR | 0.1 |
| atrPeriod | bars of ATR used to size everything below | 14 |
These share enough geometry that a detector can return more than one of them on the same bar. The engine reports every match rather than picking a winner.
Every pair on the site that can be mistaken for another, and what separates each: the look-alikes index.
A candle with a negligible real body positioned at the very top of its range, leaving a long lower wick and almost no upper one. It is the limiting case of a hammer: the same silhouette with the body shrunk to nothing.
It is read as bullish. Traditionally read as a bullish reversal signal, and usually said to carry more weight than an ordinary doji because of where the body sits.
Overlaps with hammer by construction — a hammer with a small enough body satisfies both, and both detections are reported rather than arbitrated. The range floor exists because a near-flat illiquid bar also satisfies the body test.
As an executable rule over open, high, low and close, with 5 named parameters — including body, at most, as a share of the range 0.05, lower wick, at least, as a share of the range 0.6, upper wick, at most, as a share of the range 0.1 — all published on this page so the count can be reproduced. Strict and loose variants are defined as well, so the sensitivity of the count to those thresholds is visible rather than assumed.
Measurement pending re-run
No hit rate is published here yet. The run that would supply one was computed on engine ca6d9e36c81c; the engine is now cfb08765de7c. Its candlestick rows included the still-forming bar, and it predates the chart formations entirely, so those figures have been withdrawn rather than published with a caveat. The definition above is unaffected: it is what the detector tests, and no re-run changes it.
This formation has a mirror
Its mirror is the same construction inverted, read in the opposite direction. Everything the two rules test is the same except the sign, so the thresholds on this page apply equally to both — and a result measured for one says nothing about the other until the other is measured too.
Gravestone Doji: A doji whose open and close sit at the bottom of the range, with a long upper wick.