Candlestick formation · Neutral
What is it, in one line
Small body with wicks so long the session says almost nothing.
Neutral · 1 candle · verdict: rule and thresholds below
Small body with wicks so long the session says almost nothing. 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 small real body marooned between two long wicks on a bar whose range is large relative to recent volatility. Unlike a spinning top, the range itself has to be extended — that is what makes it a high wave rather than an ordinary small candle.
The traditional claim
Traditionally read as a loss of direction, and often said to be more meaningful after a sustained move.
How this detection is wrong
The range floor is doing the work. Without minRangeAtr this is just a spinning top, and every quiet bar qualifies.
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 | 0.15 |
| minWickPct | either wick, at least, as a share of the range | 0.32 |
| minRangeAtr | bar range, at least, in ATR | 1.2 |
| 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 small real body marooned between two long wicks on a bar whose range is large relative to recent volatility. Unlike a spinning top, the range itself has to be extended — that is what makes it a high wave rather than an ordinary small candle.
It is read as neutral. Traditionally read as a loss of direction, and often said to be more meaningful after a sustained move.
The range floor is doing the work. Without minRangeAtr this is just a spinning top, and every quiet bar qualifies.
As an executable rule over open, high, low and close, with 4 named parameters — including body, at most, as a share of the range 0.15, either wick, at least, as a share of the range 0.32, bar range, at least, in ATR 1.2 — 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.