A candle with a small body and long shadows on both sides, showing a period of conflict that ended roughly where it started.
Buyers pushed up, sellers pushed down, and neither held the ground. The small candle-body sits somewhere near the middle of a comparatively long range.
A single spinning top means indecision. A cluster of them means a market in balance, which is often how a consolidation or a range looks bar by bar. After a long trend leg, one appearing on rising volume hints that the move has met opposition.
Spinning tops are not a trade by themselves. Their practical value is as a filter: they are a reason to stand aside, to expect chop, or to wait for a decisive close outside the spinning top's range before acting.
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.Range versus trend. On the left price keeps bouncing between the same floor and ceiling, which is a range. On the right each high and each low is higher than the last, inside a pair of sloping lines called a channel.
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