A candle that resolves nothing
A doji is a candle whose open and close are at or very near the same price. A spinning top is nearly the same thing with a slightly larger body and wicks on both sides.
What it records: price moved in both directions during the period and finished where it started. Neither side won.
That is genuinely useful information — and it is the pattern most often misused, because "indecision" gets read as "reversal."
Indecision is not reversal
A doji says momentum has stalled. It does not say which way the stall resolves.
In an uptrend, a doji can mean:
- Buyers are exhausted and sellers are arriving → reversal
- Buyers are pausing before continuing → continuation
- Nothing is happening because the session is quiet → noise
Three possibilities, and the candle does not distinguish them. This is why a doji is never an entry signal on its own. It is a signal to *stop assuming* — to stop expecting the trend to continue automatically and start looking for what resolves it.
Where it means something
The value comes from location and from what follows.