There are somewhere over sixty named candlestick patterns. On a 1-minute low-float chart, the overwhelming majority are indistinguishable from randomness, and treating them as signals is one of the faster ways to overtrade.
The four below survive, and they survive for a structural reason rather than a mystical one: each describes a rejection at a price, and each is only meaningful at a level that already mattered. A hammer in the middle of a range is a candle. A hammer at VWAP after a flush is information.
The four that survive
| Signal | Shape | What it describes |
|---|---|---|
| Hammer | Long lower wick, small body, at a low | Price went lower, was rejected, closed back up. Buyers stepped in below. |
| Shooting star | Long upper wick, small body, at a high | The mirror image. Sellers defended above. |
| Engulfing | A body that fully covers the prior candle's body | The period reversed the entire prior period. Control changed hands. |
| Doji at an extreme | Open ≈ close, meaningful range | Genuine indecision, but only informative after a sustained move. |
What to ignore, and why
Everything else, including three white soldiers, morning stars, and abandoned babies, was catalogued on daily rice charts and does not carry to a 1-minute chart on an instrument that halts. If you want the pattern vocabulary, learn it from the structure modules instead.
The deeper reason is sample size. A named three-candle pattern on a daily chart summarises three days of collective decision-making. The same three candles on a 1-minute chart summarise 180 seconds, and on a thin book a meaningful fraction of that is one participant. There is not enough information in the window for the pattern to mean what its name claims.
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