How Many Candlestick Patterns Are There? The Complete List and Analysis
How many candlestick patterns are there? There is most likely an unlimited number of patterns, where the minority has been labeled or given a name.
Our research indicates there are at least 75 candlestick patterns that have a formal name, see our compiled list below.
Why are candlesticks popular? Why use candlesticks?
Candlesticks are popular, despite the fact that more or less all of them leave room for personal interpretation. On the other hand, that’s perhaps precisely why candlesticks are popular?
It’s impossible to falsify a theory when you can use arguments that are hard to quantify. When there is no definite answer, you can always use anecdotal evidence to argue your case.
However, the most obvious reason why candlesticks are used is their visual appearance:
As soon as you get used to it, which might take some time, you get a much better and clearer look at the price action. We have been using candlesticks for decades, even though we don’t directly trade any signals based on these formations.
Why don’t we use candlesticks in our strategies?
First, some candlestick formations are hard to quantify. Second, we indirectly use some of the formations in the strategies. For example, the popular IBS indicator is quite similar to the Doji.
Third, we are in the process of writing code to more or less all the formations that we can manage to quantify. We will publish the result sometime during 2021.
However, in a preliminary test we did some months ago we got some surprisingly positive results in the 23 formations we tested:
The complete list of candlestick patterns
We have managed to compile some 75 candlestick patterns. If you are interested in their interpretation please go to this link:
Perhaps even more interesting is to find out their performance. To our knowledge there are zero backtests on candlesticks, until we did it. We quantified (with strict rules) all candlestick patterns we could find, and we defined 75 different patterns. We have the rules in Amibroker and plain English (plain English for Python trading and backtesting). We backtested all patterns on S&P 500. You can read more or order here:
How many candlestick patterns are there? We managed to find 75 different candlestick patterns that are not duplicate (see the full list below). We have quantified and backtested the following 75 candlestick patterns:
| Advance Block |
| Bearish Abandoned Baby |
| Bearish Belt Hold |
| Bearish Engulfing |
| Bearish Harami |
| Bearish Harami Cross |
| Bearish In Neck Line |
| Bearish Kicker |
| Bearish Marubozu |
| Bearish Mat Hold |
| Bearish Meeting Lines |
| Bearish On Neck Line |
| Bearish Separating Lines |
| Bearish Side By Side |
| Bearish Stick Sandwich |
| Bearish Three Line Strike |
| Bearish Thrusting |
| Bearish TriStar Doji |
| Bullish Abandoned Baby |
| Bullish Belt Hold |
| Bullish Breakaway |
| Bullish Engulfing |
| Bullish Harami |
| Bullish Harami Cross |
| Bullish Hikkake |
| Bullish Homing Pigeon |
| Bullish In Neck Line |
| Bullish Kicker |
| Bullish Marubozu |
| Bullish Mat Hold |
| Bullish Meeting Lines |
| Bullish On Neck Line |
| Bullish Piercing Line |
| Bullish Separating Lines |
| Bullish Side By Side |
| Bullish Stick Sandwich |
| Bullish Three Line Strike |
| Bullish Thrusting |
| Bullish TriStar Doji |
| Concealing Baby Swallow |
| Dark Cloud Cover |
| Downside Tasuki Gap |
| Dragonfly Doji |
| Evening Star |
| Falling Three Methods |
| Falling Window |
| Four Price Doji |
| Gravestone Doji |
| Hammer |
| Hanging M |