Candlestick formation · Bullish
What is it, in one line
Small body at the bottom with a long upper wick, after a decline.
Bullish · 1 candle · verdict: rule and thresholds below
Small body at the bottom with a long upper wick, after a decline. 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 single candle with a small real body at the bottom of its range and an upper wick at least twice the body, appearing after falling prices. Price reached well above the close during the session and gave the move back.
The traditional claim
Traditionally read as a bullish reversal signal, though weaker than a hammer and usually said to require confirmation on the following candle.
How this detection is wrong
Identical geometry to a shooting star. The pair hammer/hanging-man and the pair inverted-hammer/shooting-star are the clearest available demonstration that context, not shape, is what the classical literature is actually claiming.
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 | 0.33 |
| minUpperPct | upper wick, at least, as a share of the range | 0.5 |
| maxLowerPct | lower wick, at most, as a share of the range | 0.12 |
| minUpperToBody | upper wick, as a multiple of the body | 2 |
| trendPeriod | bars of prior trend inspected | 5 |
| maxPriorSlope | prior slope must be below | -1 |
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 single candle with a small real body at the bottom of its range and an upper wick at least twice the body, appearing after falling prices. Price reached well above the close during the session and gave the move back. The detector also requires a prior downtrend, so the same shape in the wrong context is not counted.
It is read as bullish. Traditionally read as a bullish reversal signal, though weaker than a hammer and usually said to require confirmation on the following candle.
Identical geometry to a shooting star. The pair hammer/hanging-man and the pair inverted-hammer/shooting-star are the clearest available demonstration that context, not shape, is what the classical literature is actually claiming.
As an executable rule over open, high, low and close, with 6 named parameters — including body, at most, as a share of the range 0.33, upper wick, at least, as a share of the range 0.5, lower wick, at most, as a share of the range 0.12 — 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.
Same shape, opposite reading
These two are the same shape. Only the prior trend separates them — this one requires a preceding downtrend, the other a preceding uptrend. A detector that ignores context returns both on the same bar, which is why the prior-slope threshold is a published parameter here rather than a hidden assumption.
Shooting Star: A small body at the bottom of the range with a long upper wick, after a rise.