Read a short run of candles together to spot trends accelerating, fading, or breaking out. This free lesson covers: What you'll learn, Trend from color, A run of green, Shrinking bodies = fading momentum, Losing steam, Expansion candles, Name it, Put it together.
Candle Anatomy · Learn · Step 1 of 8
One candle tells you who won a single round. A few candles in a row tell you who's winning the fight.
In this lesson you'll read momentum from a short series of candles instead of just one.
Going deeper
Momentum in price action means something narrower than the everyday word: it describes whether each successive candle is winning by a larger or smaller margin, not whether price is "going fast".
This is why momentum is read from body size rather than distance travelled. A market can cover a lot of ground while momentum fades, and that divergence is often the earliest warning available.
Those are calculations derived from price. Reading momentum from candles is looking at the same underlying behaviour directly, with no lag from a moving average.
Three to five is usually enough to see whether bodies are growing or shrinking. Beyond that you are reading trend rather than momentum.