Candlestick Patterns
Thrusting / On-Neck / In-Neck Lines
A green candle gaps below a red one and claws part of the way back. How far it claws back, as a percent of the red candle's own body, decides which of three named patterns it is.
Drag the close, watch the label flip
Candle two always gaps down below candle one's low, that part is fixed. Drag the slider to move where it closes and the chart, the zone marker, and the classification update together in real time. Anything past the 50% line stops being any of these three, that territory belongs to the piercing line pattern instead.
On-neck is the sliver at the very left edge, drag to find it.
Where 12 random closes (0%–70%, uniformly picked) land, run it a few times
How it works
- All three require the same setup: a bearish candle, then a bullish candle that opens with a real gap below its low. Without that gap, none of these three apply, it is just a normal bounce.
- On-neck barely counts as a close-back at all. The close lands right at or just above candle one's low, a couple ticks of buying and nothing more.
- In-neck creeps a little further, into the very bottom of candle one's real body. Still weak, but slightly more buying pressure than on-neck shows.
- Thrusting is the strongest of the three and still doesn't reach the midpoint. A close beyond the halfway mark of candle one's body is a different, more bullish pattern entirely.
- All three are read as bearish continuation, not reversal. The whole family exists to describe a bounce that fell short, the opposite conclusion from the piercing line that starts right where thrusting's territory ends.
Where this breaks
Thrusting's zone is wide by definition, so it shows up the most
The histogram above is not measuring how markets actually behave, it is measuring the width of each rule's own box. Thrusting's zone runs from roughly 12% to 50%, nearly forty points wide, while on-neck's entire territory is a sliver near 0%. Deal enough random closes and thrusting will dominate the tally almost every time, not because it is the most common real pattern, but because its definition covers by far the most ground. Treat the boundaries as exact and mechanical, and treat any claim that on-neck or in-neck happen "just as often" as thrusting with real skepticism, the rules themselves make that unlikely before a single real candle ever prints.