What are the four types of doji?

All four open and close at or near the same price. The wicks show how far price traveled before it came back, as the arrows in the drawing at the top of this page show.

A rare fifth form, the four-price doji, has open, high, low and close all equal: one price for the whole period. It appears in very thin trading and says nothing about direction. If wicks and bodies are new to you, start with how to read candlesticks.

  • Standard doji: short wicks on both sides. Price barely moved and closed where it opened. A pause.
  • Long-legged doji: long wicks on both sides. Buyers and sellers each pushed hard and neither held. More indecision, with wider swings.
  • Dragonfly doji: open, close and high at or near the same price, with a long lower wick. Sellers drove price down and buyers brought it all the way back. It is close to a hammer with no body.
  • Gravestone doji: open, close and low at or near the same price, with a long upper wick. Buyers drove price up and lost all of it. It is close to a shooting star with no body.

How small does the body of a doji have to be?

There is no official cutoff. Measure the body as a share of the candle’s whole range, from high to low. Many traders and chart scanners call a candle a doji when the body is no more than about 5 to 10% of the range, but the threshold is a convention, so two scanners can disagree about the same candle.

A bigger body with wicks on both sides is a spinning top: also indecision, with one side slightly ahead. Hypothetical: a candle with a $2.00 range, from $48.00 to $50.00, opens at $49.00 and closes at $49.10. Its $0.10 body is 5% of the range, a doji. Had it closed at $49.50, the $0.50 body would be 25% of the range, a spinning top.

Judge the body against the candles around it too. A tiny body after a run of big candles stands out; after a string of small candles it is just a quiet period.

Turn your phone sideways to read the drawing. Tap to close.

Three hand-drawn candles with the same range, each with a bracket for the range and one for the body: a doji whose body is about 5% of the range, a spinning top at about 25% and a regular candle at about 70%. Below, a number line from 0% to 100% marks each candle with a dot and shades 0 to 10% as the doji zone; a note reads body ÷ range, no official cutoff.

Is a doji bullish or bearish? Why location decides

Neither. A doji is a pause in the fight, and what it means depends on where it prints, as the three panels below show.

Steve Nison, who popularized candlesticks in the West, considered the doji more significant after a rally than after a decline. A doji at the bottom of a decline can still matter, but it needs the same confirmation. On 5-minute charts doji print all day; use only those at levels you marked on a higher timeframe, as in a support and resistance plan.

  • After a long run, at a level: a doji at resistance after several strong green candles shows buyers no longer winning at that price. This is where a doji is most useful.
  • In the middle of a range: buyers and sellers are already balanced there, so a doji adds almost nothing.
  • Inside a strong trend: trends pause. A doji in the middle of a strong move is often followed by more of the same move.

Turn your phone sideways to read the drawing. Tap to close.

Three hand-drawn panels, each with a doji circled. Left: a doji after a run of rising candles into a red resistance line, labeled worth watching. Middle: a doji in the middle of a range between a resistance line and a support line, labeled mostly noise. Right: a doji inside a strong uptrend that continues afterward, labeled often just a pause.

How to confirm a doji: the next candle decides

The doji’s high and low are the lines that matter. After a doji at resistance in an uptrend, the drawing below shows the three possible closes.

Hypothetical: a stock rallies from $40 into resistance at $46.00 and prints a doji with a high of $46.20 and a low of $45.40. The next candle closes at $45.20, below the doji’s low. A trader who sells short there puts the stop at $46.30, above the doji’s high, risking $1.10 a share. Had the next candle closed at $46.40, above the high, the warning would be cancelled. At support after a decline, flip every rule.

When the doji is the middle of three candles, after a long red candle and before a strong green one, it forms a morning doji star, a variant of the morning star.

  • A close below the doji’s low is bearish confirmation. Longs can tighten stops or take profit; a short puts its stop above the doji’s high.
  • A close inside the doji’s range is still indecision. Wait.
  • A close above the doji’s high means buyers won the next round, and the uptrend may resume.

Turn your phone sideways to read the drawing. Tap to close.

A hand-drawn flowchart. On the left, rising candles end in a doji just under a red resistance line. Three arrows lead to three boxes, each with a small doji and the next candle: a close below the doji’s low, labeled bearish confirmation; a close inside its range, labeled no signal yet: wait; and a close above its high, labeled the uptrend resumes.

Doji and volume, and when a doji fails

Heavy volume on a doji after a long rally means many shares traded without price getting anywhere: buyers met real supply. On low volume, a doji often just marks a quiet period such as the midday lull. Compare it with the usual volume for that time of day, which is what relative volume measures, since the open and close are always busier.

A doji fails when you treat it as a signal by itself: shorting every doji in an uptrend, or buying every dragonfly in a downtrend. Trends often pause on a doji and then continue. It also fails when the confirmation reverses, for example a close below the doji’s low followed by a quick close back above its high.

Heikin Ashi charts print small-bodied candles whenever a trend slows, but their opens and closes are averages, not real prices, so apply these rules to regular candles. For reading a bare chart around levels, see price action trading.