Categories
Forex Course

53. Trading The Single Candlestick Patterns – Part 2

Introduction

In the previous lesson, we discussed some basic single candlestick patterns, which gave us trend continuation signals. In this lesson, we will look at reversal patterns that are formed by a single candlestick and how traders should perceive them.

These patterns are very important to learn as they indicate clear market reversals. So essentially, when we find these patterns on the charts, we should anticipate a reversal and take our trades accordingly.

The Hanging Man Candlestick Pattern

A Hanging Man is a single candlestick pattern that occurs during an uptrend. They give warning signals that markets are going to fall. This candlestick pattern is composed of a small body, a long lower shadow, and no upper shadow. Since it is a reversal pattern that reverses the current uptrend, The Hanging Man indicates the selling pressure that is starting to increase. Below is how the Hanging Man candlestick would look like.

Below is a picture of how this pattern would like on the chart and how the trend reversal takes place.

Pattern Confirmation Criteria

  • Hanging Man is a single candlestick pattern that forms after a small rally in the price. The price rally can also be big, but it should at least be composed of few candles moving higher overall.
  • The candle must have a small body and a lower shadow at least twice the size of the real body.
  • This pattern is only a warning and a bearish candle after the formation of this pattern is highly desired. This is necessary for the Hanging Man pattern to prove to be a valid reversal. This is called confirmation.

The Hanging Man pattern is used by traders to exit long positions or enter into new short positions. After entering for a short position, stop loss can be placed above the high of the Hanging Man candle.

The Shooting Star Candlestick Pattern 

A Shooting Star is a bearish single candlestick pattern which also indicates a market reversal. It has a long upper shadow with little or no lower shadow and a small body.

This pattern typically occurs after an uptrend and forms near the lowest price of the day. The Shooting Star pattern can be seen as the market creating potential resistance around the price range. It implies that the sellers stepped in, erasing all the gains, and pushed the price near the open. Basically, at the appearance of this pattern, buyers are losing control, and sellers are taking over.

Below is a picture of how the pattern would look like on a chart

Pattern Confirmation Criteria

  • The pattern must appear after an advance in price. The price must rally in at least alternate green and red candles if not in all green candles.
  • The distance between the highest price of the candle and the opening price must be twice the length of the body of the candle.
  • It is best if there is no shadow below the body of the candle.

Traders should not take immediate action after the formation of this pattern. They should wait to see what the next candle does following the Shooting Star. If they see a further price decline, they may sell or short that currency pair. However, if the price continues to rise, it means the uptrend is still intact. So traders must favor long positions over shorting.

The difference between the Hanging Man and the Shooting Star is in the length of upper and lower shadows along with the context. By now, we have understood how continuous and reversal single candlestick patterns work. In the upcoming lessons, we will be learning dual candlestick patterns and their implication. Cheers!

[wp_quiz id=”60770″]
Categories
Forex Course

52. Trading The Single Candlestick Patterns – Part 1 (Continuous Patterns)

Introduction

In the previous article, we have discussed the basics of candlestick patterns. We also understood that there are different candlestick patterns like single, dual, and triple depending on how many candlesticks are involved. We also know that in each of these types, there are continuous and reversal patterns.

In this article, let’s discuss ‘Single Continuous Candlestick Patterns.’ As the name suggests, a single continuous candlestick pattern is formed by just one candle, and the appearance of this pattern indicates that the trend will continue in its actual direction. This means the trading signal generated by this pattern is based on a single candle’s trading action. The trades taken based on a single candlestick pattern can be extremely profitable, provided the pattern has been identified and executed correctly.

Now let’s see an example of one of the most important single continuous candlestick patterns.

The Marubozu Candlestick Pattern

Marubozu is a candlestick with no upper and lower shadow (appearing bald). Essentially, this pattern has a single candle with just the real body, as shown below.

The Marubozu candle can be both bullish and bearish, depending on the major trend. The Marubozu, in an uptrend, suggests that the buying strength of the currency pair is still prevailing in the market, and the trend is supposed to continue. The same is the case if it appears in a downtrend (Bearish Marubozu), which is a sign of trend continuation.

As always, a Red candle represents Bearish Marubozu, and a Green candle represents Bullish Marubozu.

Below is the picture of how the Marubozu pattern looks on a price chart.

A bullish Marubozu indicates that there was so much buying interest in the currency that the market participants were willing to buy the currency at every price point during the day (considering a daily time frame chart). The buying interest is so much that the pair closed near its highest point for the day. So, when such a pattern appears on the chart, it is recommended to build long positions in that Forex pair with appropriate stop-loss and take profit.

The Spinning Top Candlestick Pattern 

The Spinning Top is a very interesting candlestick pattern. Unlike other patterns, the Spinning Top is not specifically a continuous or reversal pattern. It can be indicating both depending on the market condition. A Spinning Top is a candlestick with a small real body and upper & lower wicks being identical in size.

It basically conveys the market indecision as both bulls and bears weren’t able to influence the market. When a trader encounters this pattern in a trending market, he/she needs to be prepared for two situations:

  • Either there will be another round of huge buying or selling
  • Or the markets could reverse significantly in either direction

Below is how the Spinning Top Candlestick pattern appears on a price chart.

During such uncertainty, it is recommended to trade in the options segment of the market to profit from this candlestick pattern.

This was about single candlesticks patterns and their significance. There are many more single candlestick patterns, but we hope you got the gist. We recommend you research and learn as many single patterns as you can on the internet. In the upcoming articles, we will look into some of the reversal single candlestick patterns and how they are different from the continuous patterns we discussed today. Cheers!

[wp_quiz id=”60570″]
Categories
Forex Price Action

Support and Resistance

Support and Resistance

One of the fundamentals of Technical Analysis is the theory and methodology of support and resistance. In a odd turn of events, some of the most advanced methods of identifying support and resistance are not only relatively unknown, but they are some of the original Technical Analysis theories. Some of those methods include identifying support and resistance according to naturally squared numbers, numbers related to an angular nature in Gann’s tools, harmonic ratios, pivots, Fibonacci levels, and other more esoteric methods. For this article, though, the focus is on identifying support and resistance based on prior traded price levels and ranges**.

 

What are Support and Resistance?

When you hear the word’s support and resistance, the definitions of those words may be the first thing that comes to your mind. Support indicates that something will assist or strengthen while resistance indicates rejection. In Technical Analysis, support means a level that is below the price, and resistance is above price.

The image above shows resistance as a red band and support as a green band. It’s important to understand that support and resistance on a candlestick chart should never be viewed as a static and exact price level. With a chart style that has such dynamic time and price levels, like Japanese candlesticks, support and resistance are an area or range of value. Determining the support and resistance levels requires a ‘zoomed’ out view of the chart. When you get a broader view of the past price action, you can see price levels where price has moved lower and then reversed higher (support) as well as price levels where price move higher and then reversed lower (resistance). The most important levels are those that show past resistance becoming support and vice-a-versa.

Prior Support turned into Future Resistance

 

Use another chart style to find support and resistance

Renko Chart

While it may seem simple to find support and resistance on a candlestick chart, there are some alternatives. The length of the wicks and body of candlesticks can vary and can add to the confusion. Using a Renko (above) chart simplifies the process of finding support and resistance by reducing the noise on the chart and providing less ambiguity when looking for highs and lows. Take note of how these resistance and support levels are drawn on a price-action-only chart. With a price action only chart, I don’t draw a value area like I would on a candlestick chart. But if you are not comfortable using a price-action-only chart and want to stick to a candlestick chart, then another trick that might help is to remove the wicks from the candlesticks. Look at the side by side comparison below.

Wicks VS No Wicks

Both charts display a weekly chart of the CADCHF pair. On the left, we have a regular candlestick chart with wicks – wicks that are all over the place. The chart on the right is the same as on the left, but with no wicks displayed. You can see how much more clear the tops and bottoms are on the right. This can make it a little easier to spot support and resistance levels.

 

** It is the view of this author that past support and resistance levels are inefficient for today’s markets. However, the method discussed in this article is part of a foundation of learning that can be applied to future price level analysis.

Categories
Forex Candlesticks Forex Daily Topic

Three Facts about Candlesticks you Never Knew About

Candlesticks are great because it makes trends visual at first glance. But most candlestick users stay just with that trait and don’t go more in-depth.

Of course, everybody knows some candlestick patterns such as Morning and Evening Stars, Haramis, Dojis and Shooting stars, but what’ is hiding inside the candlestick?. How to extract market sentiment from its shape or pattern?

So, let’s begin!

1 – Unwrapping a Candlestick

A candlestick is condensed information of the price action within its timeframe. The corollary is that if we go to a shorter timeframe, the candlestick now is a pattern of several candlesticks.

In the chart here we see the unwrapping of a 4H candle into 30-min parts

Three Facts about Candlesticks you Never Knew About

Chart 1 – 4H Hammer Candlestick unwrapped into 30-min candles.

 

We notice that the candle has one segment dominated by sellers and the other part controlled by buyers.

Which sentiment dominates in sellers at the bottom?

  • To the first class belong those traders who could no longer hold the pain of being long and close their position.
  • The second class is made of those who came late to the trend and sold believing the trend will last forever, or quite so.

Which sentiment dominates in the way back up?

  • Late sellers realized that they were in the losing side, so they needed to close their shorts. That meant, they have to buy, adding to the bullish fuel
  • Longs that were taken out of their position see frustrated how the price moves up without them. Hence, some of them retake their longs, while others don’t dare, afraid this is going to be another bull squeeze.

2.- Impulse or correction?

There are only two stages in the market: Impulses and corrections of previous impulses. So how to spot the price is in an impulsive or corrective phase?

Three Facts about Candlesticks you Never Knew About II

Chart 2 – Candlesticks: impulses and corrections.

Impulses break resistances and move with a clear direction. Impulses are what make trends. Corrections move in ranges, lack direction, and usually retraces some or all the advances of the previous impulse.  People usually think in trends as composed by many candlesticks or bars, but we now know that a single candlestick is composed by many shorter-timeframe candlesticks. Therefore, we cannot be surprised if we state that a trend can be made of a single candlestick. That applies also to corrective movements. A corrective movement can be summarised in a single candlestick.

How to know if a candle is impulsive or corrective?

To spot an impulse look for a candlestick with a large body and almost no wicks or shadows. To spot a corrective movement look for small-bodied candles with or without wicks ( usually with wicks).  Sometimes we find both characteristics in a candlestick. That may mean it is a combination of impulse and correction. That is ok since there is no law that forbids the start of a correction or impulse in the middle of the timeframe of a candle. Sorry, the universe is not perfect!

3.- Who is in control?

Once we know facts 1 and 2, we are in the position to spot who controls the price action: buyers or sellers.

One clue is, of course how the candlestick closes, but the other clue is where are and how long are wicks. If we spot several candlesticks with large lower wicks we could reason that the buyers are pushing the price above the bottom of the candlesticks. If wicks happen on top we could deduct the opposite: Sellers selling the rally.

Three Facts about Candlesticks you Never Knew About III

Chart 3 – Candlesticks: Wicks show who controls the price action

A downward trend with a lot of lower wicks is weak. That applies to an upward trend with lots of upper wicks.  Therefore, we can detect the market sentiment by just observing the wick appearance on the candlesticks.

 

Final words

So now we know that there is much more than just fancy colors and trend visualization. We have to inspect and pay attention to body and wicks, also called shadows by Steve Nison. The information provided by a single or a group or candlesticks is worth the time spent.