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Doji Candles, Reading Indecision Without Overreacting

A doji is a candle where the open and close are nearly equal, leaving a tiny body with wicks on one or both sides. It shows a standoff: buyers and sellers pushed price around, but neither won. Beginners often treat every doji as a reversal signal. That's a mistake. A doji is only a pause, and what matters is where it appears and what follows.

Common types:

- Standard doji: small body, wicks on both sides, pure indecision.
- Long-legged doji: very long wicks both ways, showing heavy volatility with no winner.
- Dragonfly doji: long lower wick, rejection of lower prices.
- Gravestone doji: long upper wick, rejection of higher prices.

How to use them:

1. Check the location. A doji at a key level or after a liquidity sweep carries more meaning than one in the middle of a range.
2. Check the trend. A doji after a long move may suggest exhaustion, but it needs confirmation.
3. Wait for the next candle. A strong close in the opposite direction tells you more than the doji alone.
4. Place stops beyond the doji's extreme if you trade the follow-through.

Common error: trading the doji itself. It's not an entry, it's a clue.

Mark ten dojis on your 1H chart and note what happened after each one. You'll quickly see that context decides everything.

Location is the right emphasis. I'd add timing as a separate check, because a doji in the five or ten minutes before a scheduled release means almost nothing. On the M5 chart before NFP or a central bank decision you will often see a string of tiny candles. That is the market waiting, not indecision at a level, and the next candle is decided by the number rather than by the pattern.

There is also a data quirk: the close of a candle depends on the broker's server time. A daily doji on a New York close feed can be a small bullish candle on a feed that closes at midnight GMT, because the six Asian hours land in a different bar. Worth knowing before trusting a daily doji someone else has posted.

Your practice idea is good. Doing it with the release times marked on the chart makes the point even more clearly.

Context is what makes a doji meaningful. A practical rule: a doji only matters if the next candle confirms a direction, e.g. a close beyond the doji's high or low. On its own, it's simply a pause.

The location matters too: a doji at a key level after a strong move has more meaning than one in the middle of a range, where indecision is normal.

A doji needs a numeric definition before any of this is testable, because the eye is generous. I use a body under 10 percent of the candle range, plus a range at least equal to the 20 bar average.

The second condition removes most of the noise. On EURUSD M5 during the Asian session, a 3 pip candle with a body of a few tenths of a pip appears constantly, and nearly all of those are a quiet market rather than a standoff.

The close beyond the doji that FXS Prop Desk suggests is sound, but a long legged doji can push the stop a long way off. An H1 doji with a 25 pip range means a close above its high gives an entry at least 25 pips from a stop beyond the low, which is often more than the next level offers.

In that case I drop to M15 and wait for a smaller structure break in the direction of the confirmation, using the doji midpoint as a soft line. Not perfect, but the risk stays in proportion.

LondonNewsTrader's server time point applies to 4H candles as well, not only the daily. Has anyone compared how many dojis they count on a GMT feed against a New York close feed over the same month?