The thin line below a candle body, marking how far price fell before buyers lifted it back up.
The lower shadow runs from the low of the period to the bottom of the candle-body. A long one indicates price was pushed down and then bought back before the close.
At support, a long lower shadow is the basis of a hammer read: sellers had control mid-bar and lost it. Mid-range, the same shape usually means nothing.
A useful discipline: measure the shadow as a fraction of the total bar range. Many traders require the shadow to be at least twice the body and at least 60% of the bar range before calling it a rejection. Writing the ratio down turns a vibe into a testable rule you can count in bar-replay.
Original diagrams for the ideas on this page. Illustrative, not real market data.
The parts of a candlestick. One candle sums up a slice of time: the thick real body runs from the opening price to the closing price, and the thin wicks reach out to the highest and lowest prices traded. Colour tells you which way the body ran.Range versus trend. On the left price keeps bouncing between the same floor and ceiling, which is a range. On the right each high and each low is higher than the last, inside a pair of sloping lines called a channel.
Educational only, not advice. Spotted an error? Post in Site Feedback.