Journal · 18 June 2026

Reversal candles on a thin session

A handsome turning candle after a long run is not a reversal until the session itself had some weight.

Reversal marks fail on this desk for two quiet reasons. The first: there was no move long enough to reverse. The second: the candle printed on a thin session, a holiday approach, a late-summer Friday, a day when the tape was mostly empty and the shape still looked theatrical.

Our reversal mark needs three notes in the margin. One, the prior push, with its start and end. Two, a candle that closes back inside the prior bar or back through a level you had already drawn. Three, a word for the session: full, ordinary, or thin. If you write thin, you do not upgrade the candle to a reversal. You write 'watch the next bar' and you stop.

Students hate this because the shape is the part they can see. Volume, on a printed page, is a row of strokes under the price, and it is easy to skip. We make the session word mandatory. A page without it is unfinished, even if the candle is beautiful.

A hammer after a long decline can still be the start of a turn. It can also be a pause in a decline that continues on the next full session. The clinic does not award the mark until the following bar agrees. That delay is the teaching. It feels slow. It is supposed to.

If you want a single drill: take fifteen reversal-shaped candles from thin weeks and fifteen from ordinary weeks. Mark only the ones that also had a prior push. Count how many of the thin ones were cancelled the next day. Bring the count, not a theory.

The Setup Desk is where these rules are practiced over eight weeks. Back to the journal.