Single candles: doji, hammer, shooting star, marubozu

You can name the most common single-candle shapes and explain why their location matters more than their name.

Candles with names

Scroll through any chart long enough and you start to notice repeats: a candle that is almost a cross, one with a tiny body and a very long tail, one that is nothing but body.

Traders gave these shapes names. Some come from the Japanese tradition, others from Western textbooks, and they are used on trading desks and in forums everywhere today. Knowing them makes charts easier to talk about and easier to read. But a name only describes a shape. It is a shortcut, not a signal.

Body size is the message

Start by comparing the body to the full range of the candle, from high to low.

Big body, tiny wicks. One side controlled most of the period. A candle that is almost all body is called a marubozu.
Small body, wicks on both sides. Price moved a lot in both directions but ended near where it started. A fight, no clear winner. This is a spinning top.
Almost no body. Open and close are practically equal. Neither side committed. This is a doji.

Dojis come in variants. A dragonfly doji has a long lower wick with open and close near the high. A gravestone doji has a long upper wick with open and close near the low.

Wick-heavy shapes. Four common names describe a small body at one end of the range and one long wick. Most textbooks expect the long wick to be at least about twice the length of the body. Definitions vary slightly between sources.

Small body near the top, long lower wick: after a decline it is called a hammer, after a rise a hanging man.
Small body near the bottom, long upper wick: after a rise it is called a shooting star, after a decline an inverted hammer.

Notice the pattern: the shape alone does not decide the name. Where the candle appears does. The body color matters much less for these four.

A hammer in context

A fictional stock has fallen for five days in a row, five red candles. On day six:

Opens at 40.10
Drops sharply to 38.60
Recovers and closes at 40.30, close to its high of 40.40

The body is tiny, 0.20. The lower wick is 1.50, more than seven times the body. After a decline, this shape is a hammer.

Traders often read it like this: sellers pushed price down hard, then buyers pushed it all the way back. That is information about one day. It does not say what day seven will do. Many traders wait for the next candles, and they look at where the hammer formed, for example at a price zone that mattered before.

Common mistakes

Treating a name as a signal. A hammer is not a buy signal and a shooting star is not a sell signal. They describe one period.
Ignoring location. The same shape gets a different name, and a different reading, after a rise than after a decline.
Being too strict or too loose with definitions. Real candles rarely match the textbook perfectly. Look for the idea, small body and long wick, not exact ratios.
Ignoring the timeframe. A doji on a one-minute chart says far less than a doji on a weekly chart.

The takeaway

A candle's name describes its shape. Where it appears decides what it might mean. Neither makes it a signal on its own.

Check yourself

Quick quiz

4 questions. Instant feedback, nothing is saved.

1A candle has almost no body and long wicks on both sides. What is it called?

Open and close are almost equal, so the body nearly disappears. That is a doji, in this case a long-legged one.
2A hammer and a hanging man have the same shape. What tells them apart?

Same shape, different location. After a decline traders call it a hammer, after a rise a hanging man.
3Tap the marubozu.

Tap the chart.

A marubozu is almost all body with little or no wick: one side controlled the period from open to close.
4What does a large body with almost no wicks tell you on its own?

It describes the period that just ended. It does not tell you what comes next.

of 4 correct.

Sources

Steve Nison, Japanese Candlestick Charting Techniques (New York Institute of Finance, 1991)