What is a marubozu candle?

A marubozu is a candle with a long body and little or no wick on either side. It shows that one side, buyers or sellers, controlled the price from the opening bell to the close.

In a bullish marubozu, the open is the low and the close is the high. In a bearish marubozu, the open is the high and the close is the low. “Marubozu” roughly means bald or shaved in Japanese, which describes the missing wicks.

For example, a hypothetical stock opens at ₹150, never trades below it, and closes at ₹162, which is also its day’s high. That is a bullish marubozu. Nobody who bought that day is sitting on a loss at the close, which says a lot about sentiment.

• After a consolidation, a marubozu breakout candle often signals the start of a move.
• After a long rally, it can also signal exhaustion, so read the trend.
• Some traders use the candle’s midpoint as a reference level for later pullbacks.

A practical tip: a marubozu on a stock with low volume, or on a day when the whole market gapped up on news, is less informative. Check whether the stock outperformed its sector that day. Also, a perfect zero-wick candle is rare; small wicks are fine. Our Technical Analysis course covers how to use these strong candles for entries and stop placement.