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Whale Trading

Candlestick Patterns: Series Overview and Learning Roadmap

In Chart Basics – Candles we already covered:

  • The OHLC structure (Open–High–Low–Close)
  • The meaning of the body and the wick
  • The basic psychology behind bullish and bearish candles

Now the question becomes:

How do we combine those candles and read them as patterns?
And in which locations do those combinations actually matter?

This document is the master map for the five-part candlestick pattern series that lives under Candlestick Patterns hub.

1. Overall structure of the candlestick pattern series

The candlestick section will be split into the following five parts:

Part 1: Single Candles (Foundations)

We focus on what a single candle can tell us.

Examples:

  • Candles with long lower/upper wicks (strong buying or selling response)
  • Large-bodied “trend” candles
  • Doji-type candles that signal balance or indecision

And more importantly, where they matter:

  • Near swing highs and lows
  • Around support/resistance zones you mapped in Support & Resistance basics
  • In the middle of a trend vs near an exhausted move

Goal: From a single candle, you should be able to imagine
what kind of battle took place in that area.

Part 2: Two-Candle Patterns

Here we look at what happens when two candles are combined.

Examples:

  • Engulfing-type structures
  • Inside/Outside bar combinations
  • Other common two-candle reversal/continuation patterns
    (even if we do not obsess over official pattern names)

Key questions:

  • Does this two-candle pattern act as a signal that finishes a swing?
  • Or is it just noise inside a bigger correction?

Goal: Learn how two candles can express a clearer intent to continue or reverse.

Part 3: Three-Candle Reversal Patterns

We move on to classic three-candle reversal structures.

Examples:

  • Morning Star / Evening Star–type structures
  • Three White Soldiers / Three Black Crows–type moves
  • Other three-candle combinations that are often referenced as reversal patterns

We connect this with Swing vs Correction:

  • Three-candle reversals that appear at the end of a main swing
  • Versus very similar shapes that appear in the middle of a correction

Goal: Understand why many traders pay close attention
to three-candle structures at turning points.

Part 4: Complex and Multi-Bar Patterns

Real charts rarely stop neatly at “two” or “three” candles.
Here we handle clusters of many candles acting as one structure.

Examples:

  • Multiple inside bars forming a tight compression zone
  • Repeated wicks and rejections at the top or bottom of a range
  • “Resting” phases in the middle of a trend where price oscillates in a box

We will also connect with Chart Basics – Timeframes:

  • One candle on the higher timeframe
    can appear as a cluster of many candles on a lower timeframe.

Goal: Build rules of thumb for interpreting
messy, multi-bar clusters that show up on real charts.

Part 5: Advanced – Context, Traps, and Strategy Bridge

The final part ties everything together with:

In particular, we look at failure patterns:

  • When a pattern that “should” continue or reverse the move fails
  • How that failure itself becomes a trading opportunity

We will connect this with Pattern failure playbook and
Breakout vs Fakeout Strategy.

Goal: Stop using candlestick patterns as standalone buy/sell signals,
and instead use them as one component inside a contextual strategy.

2. Suggested prerequisites

Before diving into the candlestick series, it helps a lot if you are comfortable with:

Throughout this series, we will always ask:

“In what kind of trend,
near which support/resistance,
at which part of the swing
did this pattern appear?”

3. Questions to keep asking when you look at candlestick patterns

As you go deeper into patterns,
the list of names and shapes can feel endless.

To avoid turning this into a memorization game,
we will keep coming back to a few core questions:

  1. What was the price action before this pattern?

    • Strong uptrend, strong downtrend, or choppy range?
    • Is volatility expanding or contracting?

  2. Where did this pattern appear?

  3. What did the market actually do after the pattern?

    • Did price reverse cleanly?
    • Did it move briefly and then snap back to the original direction?

  4. What does a “failed” version of this pattern look like?

    • False breakouts
    • Swing failures and trapped traders

We are not interested in:

  • “This shape = buy”
  • “That shape = sell”

Instead, we ask:

“In which situation can this shape
potentially carry meaning?”

4. Why we don’t trade purely off candlestick patterns

A common beginner question is:

“Which pattern works the best?”

But if you look at traders who survived for 10, 15, 20+ years,
you will notice two shared beliefs:

  • No pattern works 100% of the time.
  • A pattern is only one part of a full trading strategy.

For this series, we assume:

  • Candlestick patterns are triggers (entry candidates), not complete systems.
  • A real trade also needs:
    • A clear invalidation level (where the pattern is clearly wrong)
    • Position sizing rules
    • A risk–reward structure (where and how to take profits)
    • Alignment with higher and lower timeframe structure

The details of these components will be expanded in Strategy hub and Risk Management hub.

5. How to study this series effectively

A few suggestions for getting the most out of this section:

  1. Follow the order

    • Part 1 (single candles) → Part 2 (two-candle) → Part 3 (three-candle)
      → Part 4 (complex clusters) → Part 5 (advanced & traps)
    • You can jump around, but understanding single candles first
      makes everything else much easier.

  2. Mark patterns on real charts

    • After reading about 2–3 patterns in a part,
    • Go to a live or historical chart and box or annotate the same structures.

  3. Underline context more than shape

    • When going through examples, focus on:
      • Where in the trend?
      • Relative to which support/resistance?
      • At which point in the swing?

  4. Collect both winning and losing examples

    • Save screenshots where the pattern “worked”
    • Also save examples where the same pattern failed
    • This collection will be extremely useful later in
      Pattern failure playbook and Strategy hub

What comes next

From here, we will go through:

  • Part 1: Single candles
  • Part 2: Two-candle combinations
  • Part 3: Three-candle reversal patterns
  • Part 4: Complex / clustered structures
  • Part 5: Context, traps, and strategy bridges

The names of the patterns matter,
but more important is the habit of asking:

“In which context does this pattern carry weight,
and how does it fit into my overall trade plan?”