Candlestick Patterns Cheat Sheet: Bullish & Bearish
Candlestick patterns are recurring shapes formed by one or more candles on a price chart, historically associated with shifts in buying or selling pressure. Each candle in the pattern shows the same four data points, open, high, low, close, for its period, and it is the shape and sequence of those candles, not any single price point, that you read for a signal. This page organizes the patterns that come up most often into bullish, bearish, and reversal groups, with a free downloadable cheat sheet at the end.
What Are Candlestick Patterns?
Japanese Candlestick Pattern Origins
Japanese candlestick patterns get their name from where the format was invented: 18th-century Japan, where rice traders developed candlestick charting to track price movement in the rice market, long before the practice reached Western markets in the late 20th century. Steve Nison's Japanese Candlestick Charting Techniques is the standard reference for that history and for the wider catalog of named patterns, and it's cited throughout trading education for exactly that reason.
What survived the journey from rice contracts to crypto perpetuals is the underlying idea: a candle's shape captures the struggle between buyers and sellers within a single period, and certain shapes have historically recurred often enough to earn a name and a reputation. It's also the reason the candlestick view eventually displaced the plainer line and bar charts covered in Ouinex's Technical Analysis Explained for most day-to-day chart reading: a candle's shaded body and wicks make the tug-of-war between buyers and sellers visible in a single glance, where a line chart would only show where price ended up.
Patterns are usually sorted along two dimensions at once, and it's worth separating them before diving into specific shapes. The first is direction: bullish patterns are historically associated with upward pressure, bearish patterns with downward pressure. The second is what the pattern is read as doing to an existing trend: a reversal pattern is historically associated with an existing trend running out of steam and turning, while a continuation pattern is historically associated with a trend that pauses briefly and then carries on in the same direction. Most of the well-known named patterns, including nearly everything on this page, fall into the reversal camp; continuation patterns exist too, but they're a smaller, less-discussed category, which is part of why reversal patterns dominate most cheat sheets, including this one.
Every pattern below is described the same way this whole cheat sheet is meant to be read: as something historically associated with a certain outcome, not something that means the price will do anything in particular. Reading a pattern is reading probability, not a promise.
This cheat sheet groups patterns by direction first, bullish, bearish, then a dedicated reversal section for the shapes, doji and spinning top, that don't carry a bullish or bearish label on their own. That grouping is meant to make the page scannable while you're looking at a live chart: find the shape, find the section, read the one-line association, rather than searching a long alphabetical list for a name you may not remember yet.
Bullish Candlestick Patterns
These patterns are historically associated with a shift from selling pressure toward buying pressure, most often read as meaningful when they appear after a decline rather than in isolation. A bullish pattern forming in the middle of an established uptrend is usually read as confirming existing strength rather than signaling a fresh reversal, so where a pattern appears on your chart matters as much as the pattern itself.
The four entries below cover the bullish patterns that come up most often, moving from a single-candle signal (the hammer) to a two-candle signal (bullish engulfing) to three-candle sequences that take longer to form but are generally read as carrying more weight (morning star and three white soldiers). Three white soldiers is also the clearest continuation-style entry on this page: rather than marking a bottom after a decline, it's historically associated with an already-improving trend gathering further momentum.
| Pattern | What It Looks Like | What It's Historically Associated With |
| Hammer | Small body near the top of the range; long lower wick at least twice the body's length; little or no upper wick. | Selling pressure being rejected after a decline, a potential shift toward buying.
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| Bullish Engulfing | A smaller bearish candle followed by a larger bullish candle whose body fully covers the prior candle's body. | Buyers overwhelming sellers within a short span, often after a decline.
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| Morning Star | A long bearish candle, then a small-bodied candle that gaps down, then a long bullish candle closing well into the first candle's body | A bottoming process forming over three periods after a downtrend.
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| Three White Soldiers | Three consecutive long-bodied bullish candles, each opening within the prior candle's body and closing near its own high. | A sustained shift into buying, often a continuation of an already-improving trend, not a fresh reversal. |
Bearish Candlestick Patterns
Bearish patterns are the mirror image of the bullish set: historically associated with a shift from buying pressure toward selling pressure, and most meaningful after an advance rather than mid-decline. The same logic about context applies here too, a bearish pattern appearing inside an already-established downtrend is generally read as trend confirmation, not necessarily a fresh signal, and not every bearish shape marks a top; some simply confirm a decline that's already underway.
Two of the four entries below, the shooting star and the evening star, are direct mirror images of bullish patterns already covered above (the hammer and the morning star). The other two, bearish engulfing and dark cloud cover, are two-candle patterns that differ mainly in how completely the second candle's body covers the first: a full engulfing candle covers the entire prior body, while dark cloud cover only pushes into it, which is why dark cloud cover is generally read as a weaker version of the same signal. Traders who confuse the two sometimes expect dark cloud cover to behave with the same conviction as a full bearish engulfing candle, which is a common source of disappointment when the follow-through turns out weaker than anticipated.
Reversal Candlestick Patterns
This section groups the patterns most associated with indecision and turning points: the doji family and the spinning top. A doji forms when a period's open and close land at nearly the same price, leaving little or no real body, a visual sign that neither buyers nor sellers gained meaningful control during that period. On its own, a standard doji doesn't carry a directional bias; it becomes more meaningful when it appears after a strong trend, where it can be historically associated with that trend losing momentum. A standard doji is also one of the most commonly overstated patterns on this page: its real information value comes from where it appears, not from the shape alone, which is why pairing it with trend and volume context matters more here than for almost any other entry on this cheat sheet.
Two doji variants carry more directional weight because of where their wicks sit. A dragonfly doji has a long lower wick with little or no upper wick, meaning the open, high, and close all sit near the same level near the top of the period's range, appearing after a decline, it is read similarly to a hammer. A gravestone doji is the mirror image, a long upper wick with little or no lower wick, and appearing after an advance it is read similarly to a shooting star. The spinning top rounds out this group: a small body with wicks of roughly similar length on both sides, generally read as indecision in the same spirit as a doji, though with slightly more two-sided movement within the period than a doji typically shows.
| Pattern | What It Looks Like | What It's Historically Associated With |
|---|---|---|
| Doji (Standard) | Open and close land at nearly the same price, leaving little or no real body, with wicks on both sides. | Indecision, no directional bias by itself; more meaningful after a strong trend. |
| Dragonfly Doji | Long lower wick, little or no upper wick; open, high, and close cluster near the top of the range. | Similar to a hammer when it appears after a decline. |
| Gravestone Doji | Long upper wick, little or no lower wick; open, low, and close cluster near the bottom of the range. | Similar to a shooting star when it appears after an advance. |
| Spinning Top | Small body with wicks of roughly similar length on both sides. | Indecision, similar to a doji but with slightly more two-sided movement within the period. |
It's also worth noting that the bullish and bearish engulfing patterns covered above are themselves commonly classified among the most-cited reversal patterns in candlestick literature; they're kept in their own bullish and bearish sections here so the cheat sheet stays organized by direction rather than repeating the same entries twice.
How to Trade Candlestick Patterns
A pattern by itself is a starting point, not a conclusion. When you read a candlestick pattern, pair it with the broader context covered in Ouinex's Technical Analysis Explained: the prevailing trend, nearby support or resistance, and the volume behind the candles forming the pattern. A hammer that forms at a well-established support level on above-average volume reads very differently from the same-looking candle appearing in the middle of a range on thin volume. Wait for the next candle to confirm the pattern before acting on it, since a single candle can be historically associated with a reversal without that reversal actually following through in the sessions after it.
A brief illustration of how this plays out: imagine the same bullish engulfing shape appearing twice on a chart, once after a multi-week decline into a well-tested support level, on volume clearly above the recent average, and once in the middle of a range on a quiet session with volume below average. Both candles can look identical side by side. The first is the version most trading education is describing when it discusses this pattern; the second is a shape that happened to form without much behind it, and treating the two as equally meaningful is one of the more common ways this kind of reference gets misapplied in practice.
Timeframe matters here too. The same pattern shape carries a different weight on a one-minute chart than it does on a daily chart, since a one-minute candle reflects a much smaller slice of trading activity. If you want higher-confidence reads, favor patterns on longer timeframes, or look for the same pattern to appear across more than one timeframe at once, rather than chasing every shape that appears on the fastest chart available.
Where Patterns Break Down on Thin-Liquidity, 24/7 Crypto Markets
Everything above applies the same way whether the chart is a stock, a currency pair, or a crypto asset. But two features of crypto perpetuals change how much weight a given candle deserves, and neither is covered by classic candlestick literature written for markets with defined trading sessions.
The first is that crypto markets trade continuously, with no opening bell and no closing bell concentrating participation into a known window. A traditional equity chart's daily candle reflects a full session's worth of participants trading during the hours when liquidity is deepest. A crypto perpetual has no equivalent concentration point, so the depth of the order book behind any given candle varies by time of day, and a candle formed during a quiet overnight window for one region can look identical to one formed during peak global trading hours despite reflecting far less actual participation behind it.
The second is a direct consequence of the first: thinner liquidity means more slippage, and slippage is a market property, not a platform error, it happens because price can move between when an order is placed and when it executes, and that effect is larger during high volatility or low liquidity, a dynamic formally modeled in recent research on liquidity risk at perpetual futures exchanges. A long wick that looks like a textbook hammer or shooting star can be produced by a comparatively small order moving price through a thin order book, rather than by the kind of broad shift in participation the pattern is meant to represent. The candle shape ends up looking the same either way; what's different is how much genuine conviction actually sits behind it.
The practical adjustment: treat a pattern that forms during an unusually thin trading window, overnight in a major region, around a low-volume holiday, as a lower-confidence read than the same-looking pattern forming during active hours, and check the volume alongside the candle rather than reading the shape alone. This matters more, not less, on a leveraged position: a false signal costs the same attention to spot whether the position is leveraged or not, but the consequence of acting on it is amplified by leverage in exactly the way covered in Ouinex's Leverage Trading Explained. Once you've spotted a pattern worth acting on, that's where to apply it: on Ouinex's crypto perpetuals market.
Free Candlestick Patterns Cheat Sheet
The table below condenses every pattern covered on this page into a single scannable reference, and it's exactly what most people searching for a candlestick patterns pdf are actually looking for: what each pattern is called, whether it's read as bullish, bearish, or neutral, and its one-line historical association. Keep it open, print it, or save it as a PDF to reference while you're actually looking at a live chart, rather than reading it once and setting it aside. A downloadable version doesn't remove the need to check trend, volume, and liquidity context before treating any single candle as meaningful, and it isn't a signal service; it's a memory aid for the same probability-based reading process covered throughout this page. Once you've placed a trade off the back of a setup like this, tracking whether it actually worked out is a separate step, covered in Ouinex's Profit and Loss (PNL) glossary entry.
| Pattern | Type | One-Line Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Hammer | Bullish | Selling pressure rejected after a decline |
| Bullish Engulfing | Bullish | Buyers overwhelm sellers within a session |
| Morning Star | Bullish | Three-candle bottoming sequence |
| Three White Soldiers | Bullish (continuation) | Sustained buying momentum |
| Shooting Star | Bearish | Buying pressure rejected after an advance |
| Bearish Engulfing | Bearish | Sellers overwhelm buyers within a session |
| Evening Star | Bearish | Three-candle topping sequence |
| Dark Cloud Cover | Bearish | Weaker version of bearish engulfing |
| Doji (Standard) | Neutral | Indecision, no bias on its own |
| Dragonfly Doji | Bullish-leaning | Hammer-like signal after a decline |
| Gravestone Doji | Bearish-leaning | Shooting-star-like signal after an advance |
| Spinning Top | Neutral | Indecision with two-sided movement |
Putting It Together
None of the patterns above are meant to be memorized in isolation and traded the moment they appear. Read as a group, they're a shared vocabulary for describing what a candle or a short sequence of candles has historically been associated with, useful mainly because it lets you discuss and compare a chart quickly ("that's a hammer at support" says a lot faster than describing the wick and body manually). The judgment about whether a given instance is actually worth acting on still rests on the surrounding trend, volume, and, on a crypto perpetual, the liquidity conditions covered above, and on how this reading fits against the fundamentals covered in Ouinex's Technical vs. Fundamental Analysis comparison.
FAQ
What is the most reliable candlestick pattern?
There isn't a single pattern that is reliable in every context. Multi-candle patterns, engulfing patterns and the star formations, are generally read as carrying more weight than single-candle patterns like a basic doji, because they capture a fuller shift in buying or selling pressure across more than one period. But every pattern on this page describes a historical tendency, not a guarantee, and its reliability depends heavily on the trend, volume, and liquidity conditions it forms in.
How many candlestick patterns are there?
Traditional Japanese candlestick literature, including Nison's reference text, catalogs several dozen named patterns once minor variants are counted separately. This page covers the reference set traders reach for most often while learning to read a chart, not the full historical catalog.
Do candlestick patterns work on crypto?
The same shapes and the same reading process apply. What changes is how much weight to give a pattern: 24/7 trading and thin-liquidity windows on crypto perpetuals produce more false wicks and reversal traps than a chart with defined sessions, which is covered in the section above.
Sources
1. Nison, Steve. Japanese Candlestick Charting Techniques. Cited as the standard reference text, not linked, competitor-adjacent per brief.
2. Slippage-at-Risk (SaR): A Forward-Looking Liquidity Risk Framework for Perpetual Futures Exchanges
Risk Disclaimer
Virtual assets may lose their value in full or in part and are subject to extreme volatility. You may lose the full amount you invest, and your investment does not benefit from any form of financial protection.
