Anatomy of a candle
Each candlestick summarises four prices for a period: the open, the high, the low, and the close. The rectangular "body" spans the open and close, while the thin "wicks" or "shadows" reach to the high and low. A body coloured one way means price closed higher than it opened; the other way means it closed lower.
Reading a single candle tells a small story. A long body suggests strong one-directional movement; a small body suggests indecision; long wicks show that price ventured somewhere and was rejected. Learning to read individual candles is the foundation before any pattern.
What patterns claim to show
Candlestick patterns are named combinations of one or more candles thought to hint at what buyers and sellers are feeling. They are popular because they compress the tug-of-war between buyers and sellers into a recognisable shape.
The honest framing is that patterns describe recent sentiment, not the future. A pattern that often precedes a reversal also frequently precedes nothing at all. Context — where the pattern appears, and what the broader trend is doing — matters far more than the pattern in isolation.
Using patterns without fooling yourself
The trap with candlestick patterns is confirmation bias: it is easy to notice the times a pattern "worked" and forget the many times it did not. Every pattern fails regularly, and no pattern is a reliable trigger on its own.
A grounded approach treats patterns as one small clue about sentiment, always confirmed by context and always paired with a stop-loss. They can help you decide where risk is defined and favourable, but they cannot tell you where price is going. Anyone selling candlestick patterns as a system is overstating a modest, unreliable tool.