Candlestick Patterns
Ladder Bottom / Ladder Top
Three long candles build a staircase in the direction of the trend, then a small stall candle and a reversal try to prove momentum finally ran out. Any weak rung and the staircase collapses before it matters.
Build the staircase, rung by rung
Reveal one candle at a time. Each of the first three has to be a long candle extending further than the last, same color as the trend, or the staircase collapses right there and the sequence never gets a stall candle or reversal to test. If all three rungs hold, guess reversal or continuation before the final candle prints.
A short trend leg is up. Reveal rung 1.
How it works
- Every rung has to be a long candle in the trend's own direction. A small body or the wrong color at any of the first three candles ends the setup immediately, no partial credit.
- Each rung has to actually extend past the one before it. Three red candles that just chop sideways at the same level are not three descending rungs, the close has to move further each time.
- The stall candle only means something after three real rungs. A small body appearing on its own, with no staircase behind it, is just a spinning top, not part of this pattern.
- Confirmation is checked against the stall candle, not the third rung. The final candle has to close back past the stall candle's own high or low, which is a lower bar than reclaiming the whole staircase.
- Momentum running out on schedule is not guaranteed. Even a mechanically perfect three-rung staircase can just keep extending instead of reversing, that's exactly what the guess is testing.
Where this breaks
A clean staircase says momentum is stretched, not that it's done
Three long same-direction candles in a row is already a strong, extended move by the time the third rung prints. That extension is exactly why a stall and a reversal are plausible next, but stretched momentum can also just be strong momentum, the kind that keeps adding rungs four, five, six deep with no stall candle in sight. This page never lets a partial staircase count, which keeps the setup honest, but it also means most attempts here will end in a collapse at rung one or two, not because the tool is unfair, but because three clean extending rungs in a row genuinely is not a common thing for a random walk, or a real chart, to produce.