Candlestick patterns

A candlestick pattern is a shape made by one to five consecutive candles that traders read as a sign the price may turn or carry on, such as a hammer after a fall or three black crows after a rise. Every instrument inherits 61 methods that look for these shapes, one per pattern, from the CandlestickPatterns class. Each is a thin wrapper around one of TA-Lib's pattern recognisers.

How the methods work

Every pattern method takes only the five range arguments of prices, which are interval, from_date, to_date, days and adjusted. It fetches the candles, passes their open, high, low and close columns to TA-Lib, and returns the candles with one new column, named after the pattern, or None when UBI has no candles for the range.

The new column holds an integer for each candle, and the flowchart below shows how to read it.

flowchart LR
    V["Value in the<br/>pattern column"] --> A{"value"}
    A -->|"100"| B["Bullish match<br/>ending on this candle"]
    A -->|"-100"| C["Bearish match<br/>ending on this candle"]
    A -->|"0"| D["No match"]
    A -->|"200 or -200"| E["Hikkake confirmed<br/>candle_hikkake only"]

The value sits on the last candle of the pattern, so a three-candle pattern is marked on its third candle. Some patterns are bullish or bearish by definition and only ever produce one sign; others, such as the engulfing pattern, can go either way. candle_hikkake also reports 200 or -200 when a hikkake is later confirmed, which was seen over ten years of INFY candles on 2026-09-14, although its docstring describes only the common case.

The full list

The table below lists all 61 methods in the order they appear in the code. The "Pattern" column names the shape TA-Lib actually recognises, which is not always what the method name suggests: candle_side_by_side_white_lines, for example, calls CDLGAPSIDESIDEWHITE, the up or down gap side by side white lines.

Method	Pattern	TA-Lib function	Column added
candle_two_crows	Two crows	CDL2CROWS	candle_two_crows
candle_three_black_crows	Three black crows	CDL3BLACKCROWS	candle_three_black_crows
candle_three_inside_up_down	Three inside up or down	CDL3INSIDE	candle_three_inside_up_down
candle_three_line_strike	Three line strike	CDL3LINESTRIKE	candle_three_line_strike
candle_three_outside_up_down	Three outside up or down	CDL3OUTSIDE	candle_three_outside_up_down
candle_three_stars_in_the_south	Three stars in the south	CDL3STARSINSOUTH	candle_three_stars_in_the_south
candle_three_white_soldiers	Three white soldiers	CDL3WHITESOLDIERS	candle_three_white_soldiers
candle_abandoned_baby	Abandoned baby	CDLABANDONEDBABY	candle_abandoned_baby
candle_advance_block	Advance block	CDLADVANCEBLOCK	candle_advance_block
candle_belt_hold	Belt hold	CDLBELTHOLD	candle_belt_hold
candle_breakaway	Breakaway	CDLBREAKAWAY	candle_breakaway
candle_closing_marubozu	Closing marubozu	CDLCLOSINGMARUBOZU	candle_closing_marubozu
candle_concealing_baby_swallow	Concealing baby swallow	CDLCONCEALBABYSWALL	candle_concealing_baby_swallow
candle_counter_attack	Counterattack	CDLCOUNTERATTACK	candle_counter_attack
candle_dark_cloud_cover	Dark cloud cover	CDLDARKCLOUDCOVER	candle_dark_cloud_cover
candle_doji	Doji	CDLDOJI	candle_doji
candle_doji_star	Doji star	CDLDOJISTAR	candle_doji_star
candle_dragonfly_doji	Dragonfly doji	CDLDRAGONFLYDOJI	candle_dragonfly_doji
candle_engulfing	Engulfing	CDLENGULFING	candle_engulfing
candle_evening_doji_star	Evening doji star	CDLEVENINGDOJISTAR	candle_evening_dojistar (see below)
candle_evening_star	Evening star	CDLEVENINGSTAR	candle_evening_star
candle_side_by_side_white_lines	Up or down gap side by side white lines	CDLGAPSIDESIDEWHITE	candle_side_by_side_white_lines
candle_gravestone_doji	Gravestone doji	CDLGRAVESTONEDOJI	candle_gravestone_doji
candle_hammer	Hammer	CDLHAMMER	candle_hammer
candle_hanging_man	Hanging man	CDLHANGINGMAN	candle_hangingman (see below)
candle_harami	Harami	CDLHARAMI	candle_harami
candle_harami_cross	Harami cross	CDLHARAMICROSS	candle_harami_cross
candle_high_wave	High wave	CDLHIGHWAVE	candle_high_wave
candle_hikkake	Hikkake	CDLHIKKAKE	candle_hikkake
candle_modified_hikkake	Modified hikkake	CDLHIKKAKEMOD	candle_modified_hikkake
candle_homing_pigeon	Homing pigeon	CDLHOMINGPIGEON	candle_homing_pigeon
candle_identical_three_crows	Identical three crows	CDLIDENTICAL3CROWS	candle_identical_three_crows
candle_in_neck	In-neck	CDLINNECK	candle_in_neck
candle_inverted_hammer	Inverted hammer	CDLINVERTEDHAMMER	candle_inverted_hammer
candle_kicking	Kicking	CDLKICKING	candle_kicking
candle_kicking_by_length	Kicking, with bull or bear decided by the longer marubozu	CDLKICKINGBYLENGTH	candle_kicking_by_length
candle_ladder_bottom	Ladder bottom	CDLLADDERBOTTOM	candle_ladder_bottom
candle_long_legged_doji	Long legged doji	CDLLONGLEGGEDDOJI	candle_long_legged_doji
candle_long_line	Long line	CDLLONGLINE	candle_long_line
candle_marubozu	Marubozu	CDLMARUBOZU	candle_marubozu
candle_matching_low	Matching low	CDLMATCHINGLOW	candle_matching_low
candle_mat_hold	Mat hold	CDLMATHOLD	candle_mat_hold
candle_morning_star	Morning star	CDLMORNINGSTAR	candle_morning_star
candle_morning_star_doji	Morning doji star	CDLMORNINGDOJISTAR	candle_morning_star_doji
candle_on_neck	On-neck	CDLONNECK	candle_on_neck
candle_piercing	Piercing	CDLPIERCING	candle_piercing
candle_rickshaw_man	Rickshaw man	CDLRICKSHAWMAN	candle_rickshaw_man
candle_rise_fall_three_methods	Rising or falling three methods	CDLRISEFALL3METHODS	candle_rise_fall_three_methods
candle_separating_lines	Separating lines	CDLSEPARATINGLINES	candle_separating_lines
candle_shooting_star	Shooting star	CDLSHOOTINGSTAR	candle_shooting_star
candle_short_line	Short line	CDLSHORTLINE	candle_short_line
candle_spinning_top	Spinning top	CDLSPINNINGTOP	candle_spinning_top
candle_stalled_pattern	Stalled	CDLSTALLEDPATTERN	candle_stalled_pattern
candle_stick_sandwich	Stick sandwich	CDLSTICKSANDWICH	candle_stick_sandwich
candle_takuri	Takuri, a dragonfly doji with a very long lower shadow	CDLTAKURI	candle_takuri
candle_tasuki_gap	Tasuki gap	CDLTASUKIGAP	candle_tasuki_gap
candle_thrusting_pattern	Thrusting	CDLTHRUSTING	candle_thrusting_pattern
candle_tristar	Tristar	CDLTRISTAR	candle_tristar
candle_unique_three_river	Unique three river	CDLUNIQUE3RIVER	candle_unique_three_river
candle_up_side_gap_two_crows	Upside gap two crows	CDLUPSIDEGAP2CROWS	candle_up_side_gap_two_crows
candle_up_side_down_side_gap_three_methods	Upside or downside gap three methods	CDLXSIDEGAP3METHODS	candle_up_side_gap_three_methods (see below)

Three column labels differ from their method names, because the methods were renamed to separate their words while the labels were kept so that code reading the frames still works. The table below lists them.

Method	Column label	Why
candle_evening_doji_star	candle_evening_dojistar	The method was renamed from candle_evening_dojistar
candle_hanging_man	candle_hangingman	The method was renamed from candle_hangingman
candle_up_side_down_side_gap_three_methods	candle_up_side_gap_three_methods	The old label dropped "down_side", and the mismatch was carried over

An example

The example below looks for engulfing patterns in a year of RELIANCE's daily candles and keeps the days a match was found. It was not run for this page, because it needs a live UBI; the column name comes from the code. All 61 methods ran without error over 270 INFY daily candles when they were ported on 2026-09-14.

from tradingmachine.assets import equities

reliance = equities.Equity(exchange="nse", symbol="RELIANCE")
frame = reliance.candle_engulfing(days=365)

matches = frame[frame["candle_engulfing"] != 0]
bullish = matches[matches["candle_engulfing"] > 0]
bearish = matches[matches["candle_engulfing"] < 0]
print(len(bullish), "bullish and", len(bearish), "bearish engulfing days")

Each pattern method fetches the candles afresh, so scanning for many patterns sends one request per pattern. That is cheap against a local UBI, which caches candles in Redis, but if you want every pattern at once it is simpler to fetch the candles once with prices and call TA-Lib's functions yourself on the frame, using the TA-Lib names in the table above.