Candlestick pattern cheat sheet
Spotted a candle in some particular shape and don't know what it's called or whether it leans up or down? This sheet lays out the 13 most common patterns, each with a hand-drawn candle, a bullish/bearish tag, a one-line meaning, and an honestly labelled reliability. Learn to spot them — don't trade off them.
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🔒 A front-end page that collects nothing. Every diagram is hand-drawn and exaggerated so it's easy to read; real candles are rarely this textbook-clean.
How to use this sheet
It's simple: in a live chart you see a candle (or a few) in an unusual shape — match it against the hand-drawn pictures above to find its name, then check its direction tag and one-line meaning so you know roughly what it's saying. The point is that recognising it is enough — knowing "ah, that's a bullish engulfing" is for following what other people mean, not for trading off it.
What "reliability" means here
Each card has a High/Medium/Low reliability tag in the top corner. It's a relative note, not a win rate. "High" only means that, with the trend and volume backing it, the pattern is relatively more worth a second look — not that it's right whenever it shows up. Single-candle patterns (like the doji) are noisy and fool people most, so they're tagged low; three-candle combos (morning star, three white soldiers) are a little sturdier. But not one of them comes close to "definitely".
Three things that always matter more than the pattern
- Position: the same hammer is bullish at the tail of a fall and gets renamed a hanging man (the opposite reading) at a peak. A pattern apart from position means nothing.
- Volume: a reversal pattern with no rise in volume to back it is less trustworthy.
- Risk: what really decides whether you make or lose money is deciding before you buy "where I admit I'm wrong, and the most I'll lose". Start with the risk calculator.
To read each pattern's full story, see the long note A few common candle patterns; to get a single candle straight first, see how to read a candlestick chart.
No candle pattern "always rises/falls when it appears". Trading mechanically off pattern slogans is a common way beginners lose money. Patterns have to be read together with position, volume and timeframe, and they're always just odds. Crypto swings hard, and contracts with leverage can wipe out all of your capital, and then some. Everything here is chart-reading education, not investment advice, and we don't predict moves.
Find these patterns one by one on the history
You won't lock patterns in from diagrams alone; you have to dig for them in real markets. OKX lets you scroll candle history freely and has a free demo account, so you can spot patterns and watch how accurate they really are with virtual funds — without spending a cent.
Open a practice account on OKX →Contains a referral link (invite code OK3188). We're not affiliated with OKX; whether you sign up, and your fees, are unaffected. Crypto carries risk — assess it for yourself.