A candle with a full body and little or no shadow, meaning price opened at one extreme and closed at the other.
Marubozu means shaved head, referring to the missing wicks. A bullish marubozu opens at or near the low and closes at or near the high; the bearish version is the mirror. It signals one-sided control from the first trade to the last.
Example: a 30-minute candle opens at 4,500.00, never trades below 4,500.25, and closes at 4,512.00 on the high. Nobody who sold during that half-hour was rewarded at any point.
Marubozu are most informative when they break a level or launch a leg. They are also awkward to trade: by definition the entry after the candle is at the extreme of the move, and the logical stop sits on the other side of a large bar. Many traders wait for a shallow pullback toward the candle's midpoint instead of chasing the close.
Original diagrams for the ideas on this page. Illustrative, not real market data.
The parts of a candlestick. One candle sums up a slice of time: the thick real body runs from the opening price to the closing price, and the thin wicks reach out to the highest and lowest prices traded. Colour tells you which way the body ran.
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