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Wicks & pin bars, explained
Drag the two sliders to set the upper and lower wick lengths relative to the body. Below, the candle is drawn live and told back to you: what that kind of wick is saying — a long upper wick, a long lower wick, both long, or a single pin. Start here to get clear on what a wick means and what a pin bar is.
The slider numbers are the wick length as a multiple of the body (0–3×), just to show the proportion — not a real price. Every read here is a lean, not a verdict: the same wick can mean completely different things low down, up high, or mid-trend, so always read it together with location. This tool works offline and does not predict direction and is not a buy or sell signal.
What a long upper wick is actually saying
Drag the upper-wick slider to the right and the line above the body stretches longer and longer. On a real chart that maps to this: for a while price got pushed well above where it ended up, then it was sold back down, closing a good way below the high. A long upper wick left behind usually means sellers were up there, capping the push higher — so it often reads as a mark that "there was real supply overhead." Now drag the lower wick down to almost nothing and you get an upper pin: that "spiked up and gave almost all of it back" shape often shows up on bull traps or a sweep of the stops sitting above.
Play with both sliders back and forth: only the upper wick long, only the lower wick long, both long, or almost no wicks — each one comes back with a different read below. A few drags in and the idea sticks: a wick is telling you about a tug-of-war.
When a wick is worth reading, and when to leave it alone
Wicks read best at key levels: a long upper wick as price nears a resistance line, or a long lower wick down near support, carries more weight as corroboration that "someone is defending here." The opposite — picking one wick to obsess over in the middle of aimless chop, or judging the big direction off a single wick on a very short timeframe (say a one-minute bar) — is worth very little. A wick helps you feel the push and pull between buyers and sellers; it is not a buy or sell switch.
One common misread
The most common mistake is memorising "long lower wick = bottom, long upper wick = top" as a rule. A wick has to be read by where it appears: the same long lower wick means very different things down at a low after a long fall versus halfway up a fresh rally. Every read here leans toward one possibility, it is not a verdict, and it makes no promise about what comes next — one lonely candle cannot tell you direction on its own; read it together with location and the candles around it.
Read on: what long upper and lower wicks are saying, and what a pin bar is and why it forms.