What a spinning top is
A spinning top is a candle with a small body and long shadows on both sides. The body can be bullish or bearish, which gives the white spinning top and the black one, often called a bearish spinning top, and the definition requires no prior trend.
That last point sets it clearly apart from the hammer, which demands a decline before it. A spinning top can appear anywhere, and that is already an indication of what it is worth.
The shape says something simple: during the period, price went far in both directions and came back near its starting point. Nobody won. It is indecision, and the candle claims nothing else, unlike the hammer which presents itself as a directional signal.
Do not confuse it with the doji, whose body is almost non-existent. The spinning top has a real body, simply small relative to its shadows. Here again, decide your threshold and write it down.
The numbers, and they leave no room
Measurements published by Thomas Bulkowski for the white spinning top, quoted as they stand.
Theoretical performance: indecision. Tested performance: reversal 50% of the time. Exactly one time in two. That is the statistical definition of a tossed coin.
Frequency rank: 2. It is the second most common candle in the entire catalogue. Overall performance rank: 69 out of 103.
Those three lines must be read together and taken for what they say. A pattern that appears almost all the time and reverses the market one time in two carries no directional information. That is not a criticism of the candle, it is its nature: it exists to express indecision, and that is exactly what it does.
Two filters come out of the same work. White spinning tops located in the bottom third of the yearly low perform best. And those whose shadows are longer than the median do better than the rest, which is consistent: the longer the shadows, the more happened during the period.
Source: Thomas Bulkowski's research pages on thepatternsite.com, consulted in September 2026.
What a coin flip is good for
A 50% pattern is not useless, it is simply useless as a trigger. It remains useful as context, and that distinction applies to a great many other things in trading.
Three uses that hold up. One: a spinning top after a long series of clean candles in the same direction signals that the move has stopped being unanimous. It does not say it reverses, it says it is slowing.
Two: a spinning top on a level you were already following is information. The market came to touch that level, struggled, and settled nothing. Your level holds, for now.
Three, and this is the most useful: a spinning top is a good reason not to enter. Most traders look for reasons to enter and never look for reasons to abstain. A period in which nobody took control is one of them.
What the candle does not allow, on the other hand, is taking a position in one direction because of it. The numbers forbid it.
What it gives in your own journal
This pattern is measured differently from the others, and that is what makes it interesting to journal. Since it does not trigger an entry, its win rate is not what interests you.
Instead, tag your trades according to whether a spinning top was present just before your entry, with your trade or against it. If your win rate is lower when a spinning top precedes the entry, you have just found an abstention filter that costs nothing to apply. That is the kind of gain nobody ever sees without a record, because it concerns the trades you should not have taken.
The other useful measurement is maximum adverse excursion on those trades. An entry taken right after a period of indecision often gets shaken before it goes. If your trades preceded by a spinning top show a markedly larger adverse excursion, your stop needs to be wider on those entries, or the entry should not be taken at all.
Tradoshi computes that excursion automatically and lets you filter the journal by label, so the comparison reads directly.
Frequently asked questions
Is a spinning top bullish or bearish? Neither, and it is measured: reversal in exactly 50% of cases. It expresses indecision, it gives no direction.
Does body colour change anything? It separates the white spinning top from the black one, which are recorded separately. The gap between them is not of a kind to change a decision.
Spinning top or doji? The doji has virtually no body, open and close together. The spinning top has a real body, a small one. Set your threshold once and for all.
Should you wait for the next candle? Yes, always, and that is not specific to this pattern. But it is more true here than elsewhere, since the spinning top itself gives no direction: the following candle is what will carry the information.
Is it useful intraday? It is even more frequent there, so even less selective. On a low timeframe, a spinning top is often just an activity trough, not a confrontation.
Key takeaways
- Small body, long shadows on both sides, and no prior trend required. It can appear anywhere.
- Reversal measured at exactly 50%, with a frequency rank of 2: the second most common candle carries no direction at all.
- It is not a trigger, it is context. Its best use is as a good reason not to enter.
- Spinning tops with long shadows do better than the rest, which is consistent: the more that happened, the more the candle says.
- In your journal, measure it on the trades it precedes, not on the trades it triggers. It is an abstention filter.
Going further
These blog articles dig into this lesson's ideas, one subject per article.