Candlestick Patterns
Belt Hold Line
A single long candle that opens right at its low or its high, with almost no wick on that side, after a trend has been running.
Sculpt the candle, watch it classify itself
Two sliders control the same candle: how much wick sits on the open side, and how much of the range the body itself takes up. Whatever's left becomes wick on the close side automatically. As you drag, the candle redraws after a short trend and the dot on the map moves, live-classified into one of four buckets off the actual numbers, not a description.
How it works
- The open sits at the extreme, not the close. A bullish belt hold opens at (or essentially at) its low for the bar, then climbs the whole session. A bearish belt hold opens at its high, then sells off the whole session. Either way, the open-side wick is close to zero.
- The body has to be long. A tiny body with a small open-side wick isn't a belt hold, it's an ordinary quiet candle. This drill treats anything above roughly 60% body-to-range, with 3% or less wick on the open side, as qualifying.
- The close side is allowed to have a real wick. This is the actual difference from a marubozu, which requires almost no wick on either end. A belt hold only demands discipline on one side, the open.
- Context matters as much as shape. A bullish belt hold means something different showing up after a multi-bar downtrend, where it reads as a possible reversal, than showing up in the middle of a range, where it's an ordinary strong up day.
- It's weaker than a marubozu precisely because it's more common. Requiring only one clean side instead of two means far more real candles qualify, which is exactly why a lone belt hold carries less weight as a signal than a lone marubozu.
Where this breaks
Long-bodied candles with a clean open happen constantly, reversal or not
Because a belt hold only requires one side of the candle to be clean, ordinary trend days produce this shape all the time, not just at turning points. A stock gapping down and grinding higher all session on no particular news will print a textbook bullish belt hold in the middle of an uptrend it was already in, with no reversal happening at all. The pattern is a single bar with no built-in confirmation step, unlike three-line strike or three inside up/down, which both require a second candle to validate the move. Reading every belt hold as a reversal signal, rather than checking whether one actually shows up after an extended trend and gets followed by anything, produces a high volume of false reversal calls simply because the shape itself is not rare.