Marubozu

In practice

A green marubozu opens at the period low and closes at the high with no wicks — buyers dominated from the first tick to the last. A red marubozu is the mirror image, with sellers in control the entire session.

Why it matters for traders

A marubozu is a pure momentum candle that shows one side won the period with no real fight, making it a strong confirmation of trend strength. It is especially powerful when it breaks through a key level, signalling the move had conviction behind it rather than being a thin spike.

Common pitfall

The mistake is chasing a marubozu after it has already closed, buying the top or selling the bottom of a move that may immediately retrace. A marubozu shows conviction for that period, not that the next period will continue. Better to wait for a pullback or a retest rather than chasing the full-body candle. Treat it as confirmation that a level was taken with force, then plan an entry around the structure it created.

Putting it in context

Like all candlestick concepts, this pattern is a clue about order flow, not a guarantee about what happens next. Its reliability depends heavily on context: the same shape means little in the middle of a range but can be significant at a well-tested support level, a prior swing high, or a round psychological number. Professional traders also weigh the timeframe — a signal on the daily chart carries far more weight than one on the five-minute chart, where noise dominates. Before trading any candlestick pattern with real money, scroll back through at least a hundred historical examples on the pairs you trade and note how often the expected follow-through actually occurred, and what the best confirmation and stop placement would have been.

Lessons that use this term

• Spinning Top and Marubozu

  The two extremes: total indecision and total conviction.

Related terms