Candlestick Patterns

Recognise 15 classic candlestick patterns in every ticker’s candles, with the definitions of TA-Lib’s CDL functions. Candlestick charting reads the open, high, low and close of a period as one candle: the real body between the open and the close and the shadows up to the high and down to the low. Certain shapes and sequences are read as a sign that a move is ending or continuing.

Each pattern is 1 on the candle that completes it as a bullish pattern, -1 as a bearish pattern and 0 otherwise (TA-Lib’s +100 and -100 divided by 100). The weaker engulfing and harami, where one end of the two real bodies is equal, are 0.8 and -0.8 (TA-Lib’s 80). The doji is indecision rather than a direction and is 1 when present; a marubozu and a spinning top take the colour of the candle (1 white, -1 black).

The patterns:

• Doji: an open and close nearly equal.
• Hammer (bullish) and Hanging Man (bearish): a short real body at the top of a long lower shadow, near the previous low or the previous high respectively.
• Inverted Hammer (bullish) and Shooting Star (bearish): a short real body at the bottom of a long upper shadow that gaps down or up from the previous real body.
• Engulfing: a real body that engulfs the previous real body of the opposite colour.
• Harami: a short real body inside the previous long real body, opposite to its colour.
• Piercing Line (bullish) and Dark Cloud Cover (bearish): a long candle followed by one of the opposite colour that opens beyond the previous low (high) and closes past the middle of the previous real body.
• Morning Star (bullish) and Evening Star (bearish): a long real body, a short real body that gaps away from it and a real body of the opposite colour that closes at least 30% into the first.
• Three White Soldiers (bullish) and Three Black Crows (bearish): three long-enough candles of one colour with ever higher (lower) closes, each opening within the previous real body.
• Marubozu: a long real body with (almost) no shadows.
• Spinning Top: a short real body with both shadows longer than the body.

Sizes are relative to the ticker’s own recent candles, as in TA-Lib: a real body is long (short) when it is longer (shorter) than the average real body of the 10 previous candles, a doji’s body is at most 10% and a very short shadow less than 10% of their average high-low range, a long shadow is longer than the candle’s own real body, and “near” is within 20% and “far” at least 60% of the average high-low range of the 5 previous candles.

For more information, see the following books:

• Nison, S. (1991). “Japanese Candlestick Charting Techniques.” New York Institute of Finance.
• Bulkowski, T.N. (2008). “Encyclopedia of Candlestick Charts.” Wiley.

Also known as: candlestick patterns, candle patterns, CDL, Japanese candlesticks.

Candlestick Patterns in Python

Install the Finance Toolkit with:

pip install financetoolkit -U

Then call get_candlestick_patterns as shown below.

from financetoolkit import Toolkit

toolkit = Toolkit(
    ["AAPL", "MSFT"],
    api_key="FINANCIAL_MODELING_PREP_KEY",
    start_date="2025-01-01",
    end_date="2025-12-31",
)

patterns = toolkit.technicals.get_candlestick_patterns()

engulfing = patterns["Engulfing"]
engulfing[engulfing.ne(0).any(axis=1)].tail()

Which returns:

Parameters

get_candlestick_patterns accepts the following parameters.

Related Signals & Patterns