Two-candle reversals
How far the second body reaches back into the first.
Read a two-candle pattern as one question — how far the second body reached back into the first — and name the answer: harami, piercing line or dark cloud cover, engulfing. Judge the pair by bodies rather than wicks, size it against the bars around it, place it at a level and inside a structure, and state the one close that makes its reading false: beyond the far extreme of the pair. Know where the gap-based names — kickers, counterattacks — simply do not form on continuously traded markets.
5 chapters · 6 quiz questions · 13 terms · included with a plan
Otus, on this module
The word "reversal" is in the title because that is what the family is called, not because two bars can reverse anything. What they can do is record that one period undid some share of the one before it. How big that share is, and where it happened, is the whole reading.
The chapters
Each module ends with you doing what it taught — a written answer Otus reads, and a quiz.
- 01 · Read
Engulfing: one body covers the other
Bullish and bearish engulfing — bodies, not wicks, and the price that undoes them.
- 02 · Read
How far the second body reaches
Harami, piercing line, dark cloud cover — the ladder engulfing sits at the top of.
- 03 · Read
Matching extremes, and the gap patterns
Tweezers and the matching low — and why kickers barely exist on a 24-hour chart.
- 04 · Watch
Watch: Bullish Engulfing
One minute, then the step ticks itself.
- 05 · Write
In your own words
Three sentences. Otus reads them.
- 06 · Quiz
Six questions
A wrong answer still pays. It costs the combo, not the XP.
13 terms this module defines
The same definitions Otus uses in the lessons. All of them are in the trading glossary.
- Bullish engulfing
- A falling bar followed by a rising bar whose body covers the first body entirely. One period took back all of the previous one's progress and more.
- Bearish engulfing
- A rising bar followed by a falling bar whose body covers the first body entirely. The mirror of the bullish one, read at the top of a rise.
- Bodies, not wicks
- Two-candle patterns compare bodies — where each period opened and closed. The wicks of the first bar do not have to be covered for a pair to count as engulfing.
- How far the second body reaches
- The question behind most two-candle names: inside the first body (harami), past its midpoint (piercing line, dark cloud cover) or beyond its open (engulfing).
- Harami
- A large body followed by a small one that fits inside it. It records contraction — the move stopped extending for a period — not a reversal.
- Body midpoint
- Halfway between a bar's open and close. The line a piercing line or dark cloud cover has to close beyond.
- Piercing line
- After a fall, a rising bar that closes above the midpoint of the falling body but not above its open. The middle rung between harami and engulfing.
- Dark cloud cover
- After a rise, a falling bar that closes below the midpoint of the rising body but not below its open. The mirror of the piercing line.
- The pair's far extreme
- Where a two-candle reading stops being true: a close beyond the lower low of both bars for a bullish pair, or beyond the higher high for a bearish one.
- Tweezers
- Two neighbouring bars with the same low (tweezer bottom) or the same high (tweezer top). The smallest level there is: two tests in a row, matching within a tick or two.
- Matching low
- Two falling bars after a decline that close at the same price. A close-based version of the tweezer bottom. Often taught as a reversal, measured more often as a continuation; a close beneath the shared close retires any reading of it as a floor.
- Kicker
- A bar followed by one that opens beyond the first bar's open, in the opposite direction, and never trades back into the gap. It needs a real gap, so it barely forms intraday on continuously traded markets.
- Counterattack line
- Two opposite bars closing at the same price, the second having opened far from it. Like the kicker, it depends on a gap between one close and the next open.
Finishing it pays 150 XP and 3 keys on the game board, on top of what each chapter earns. XP measures what you learned — never what you earned. How levels work.
Education only. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell anything; the school teaches reading charts, never predictions.
Start with lesson one.
The first modules, Otus as your tutor and the game board are free. No card needed.