Candlestick formation · Bearish
What is it, in one line
Small body at the bottom with a long upper wick, after a rise.
Bearish · 1 candle · verdict: rule and thresholds below
Small body at the bottom with a long upper wick, after a rise. 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
The mirror of the hammer pair: small real body at the bottom of the range, long upper wick, appearing after rising prices. Geometrically identical to an inverted hammer, and separated from it only by what came before.
The traditional claim
Traditionally read as a bearish reversal signal — buyers pushed price up during the session and could not hold it.
How this detection is wrong
Identical geometry to an inverted hammer; separated only by minPriorSlope. TA-Lib additionally requires a gap up from the prior body; this definition omits that requirement, because most modern intraday series rarely gap and the classical constraint would suppress most detections outside daily equities data.
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 |
| minPriorSlope | prior slope must be above | 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.
The mirror of the hammer pair: small real body at the bottom of the range, long upper wick, appearing after rising prices. Geometrically identical to an inverted hammer, and separated from it only by what came before. The detector also requires a prior uptrend, so the same shape in the wrong context is not counted.
It is read as bearish. Traditionally read as a bearish reversal signal — buyers pushed price up during the session and could not hold it.
Identical geometry to an inverted hammer; separated only by minPriorSlope. TA-Lib additionally requires a gap up from the prior body; this definition omits that requirement, because most modern intraday series rarely gap and the classical constraint would suppress most detections outside daily equities data.
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 uptrend, the other a preceding downtrend. 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.
Inverted Hammer: A small body at the bottom of the range with a long upper wick, following a decline.