Doji

A doji is a candlestick whose open and close land at nearly the same price, leaving a body so thin it looks like a cross or plus sign. The wicks can be long or short; the defining feature is the near-zero body.

The shape records a stalemate. Price may have ranged widely during the bar, but neither side held the ground it took. After a long directional run, a doji flags that the pressure driving the move went flat for one bar. In a sideways chop it means almost nothing, because indecision inside indecision is just noise.

A doji by itself is not a reversal signal. Traders wait for the next candle to break the doji's high or low before treating it as anything more than a pause.