Spinning Top

What is a Spinning Top?

A spinning top is a single candle with a small real body near the middle of its range and upper and lower shadows that are each longer than the body. The shape records a session where both sides pushed and neither held: price traveled well above and below the open, then settled close to where it started. Body color matters little, since the open-to-close distance is small by definition. It is the standard candlestick shorthand for indecision, one step short of a doji, whose body is virtually zero, and the polar opposite of a marubozu, which is all body and no shadow.

Context supplies all of the meaning. After a strong directional run, a spinning top says momentum stalled and the next candle gets to resolve the standoff; inside an established range it is ordinary noise. It is also the archetypal middle candle of star reversals such as the morning star.

How traders use it

• As a pause marker after an extended move: traders wait for the following candle to resolve direction before reading it as reversal or continuation.
• As the indecision component inside multi-candle patterns, most visibly the star position of morning and evening stars.
• As a filter: entries that would trigger on a spinning top are often skipped or downsized because the bar carries no directional information on its own.