Rare Candlestick Formations

What are Rare Candlestick Formations?

Rare candlestick formations are the long tail of the Japanese candlestick catalog: patterns like the advance block, deliberation, three stars in the south, unique three-river bottom, concealing baby swallow, stick sandwich, homing pigeon, counterattack lines, upside-gap two crows, and three-line strike. Each is defined by a strict sequence of body sizes, colors, gaps, and shadow relationships. Most are variations on familiar mechanics: the homing pigeon is a harami with two bearish candles, the advance block is a three-candle advance with shrinking bodies and lengthening upper shadows, and counterattack lines are opposite-colored candles meeting at the same close.

Their rarity is arithmetic. Every added condition (an exact gap, a matching close, a third or fourth qualifying candle) multiplies away candidates, and several formations require true gaps that almost never print in around-the-clock markets. That same rarity makes the statistics thin: samples are too small for dependable base rates, so the traditional bullish or bearish labels rest on the classical literature rather than on strong evidence.

How traders use it

• For screener completeness: full-catalog scanners flag every recognized formation so nothing slips past, leaving the context judgment to the trader.
• As taxonomy: mapping a rare pattern back to its common relative (a doji-based star, an engulfing variant) usually explains its intended logic better than memorizing the exotic name.
• With reduced weight: given tiny historical samples, these are best treated as context notes beside structure and volume, not standalone signals.