Read the wick before you trust the close

Most newcomers draw a box around the candle body and move on. That habit is tidy and it is also how engulfing patterns get miscounted. A long upper wick on an otherwise tidy white body is not the same event as a close near the high. One shows rejection. The other shows follow-through that still has to prove itself on the next bar.

In workshop packs we force a two-pass mark. Pass one: tick the high and low in pencil. Pass two: shade the body. Only then do we name the shape. Students who skip pass one routinely call a hanging man a hammer because they never measured which side of the range the close occupied.

This is not mysticism. It is a reading order. High, low, open, close. If you reverse that order, the story of the session arrives backwards.