Direct Answer
A Marubozu is a full-bodied candle with no wicks at all, or negligible ones. "Marubozu" means "bald head" or "close-cropped" in Japanese, describing a candle with nothing sticking out above or below its body.
Key Takeaways
- A Marubozu is a full-bodied candle with no wicks at all (or negligible ones), the name means "bald head" or "close-cropped" in Japanese.
- A Bullish (White) Marubozu opens at the bar's low and closes at its high, meaning buyers controlled the entire session with no pullback on either end.
- A Bearish (Black) Marubozu is the mirror image: it opens at the high and closes at the low.
- An Opening Marubozu has a wick only at the close end; a Closing Marubozu has a wick only at the open end, a full Marubozu has neither.
- Because there's no wick, the bar itself has no natural stop or invalidation level the way a hammer's low or a doji's range provides.
Marubozu Candlestick Pattern: Formation, Meaning, and Signals
A Marubozu is a candlestick with a full body and no wicks at either end, meaning one side controlled the entire session from open to close. A Bullish Marubozu opens at the low and closes at the high, and its meaning as continuation or reversal depends on the trend it appears in.
What Is a Marubozu?
A Marubozu is a full-bodied candle with no wicks at all, or negligible ones. "Marubozu" means "bald head" or "close-cropped" in Japanese, describing a candle with nothing sticking out above or below its body. A Bullish (or "White") Marubozu opens at the bar's low and closes at its high, open equals low, close equals high, meaning buyers controlled the entire session with no pullback recorded on either end. A Bearish (or "Black") Marubozu is the mirror image: it opens at the high and closes at the low.
Because the open and close sit at the two extremes of the bar's range, a Marubozu is read as a strong statement of one-sided conviction for that session, there was no meaningful moment where the opposing side took control, unlike a doji or a candle with visible wicks on both ends.
How a Marubozu Forms
Two named sub-variants exist based on which single end has a wick. An Opening Marubozu has a wick only at the close end, no wick at the open. A Closing Marubozu has a wick only at the open end, no wick at the close. A full Marubozu has neither wick: the open and close sit exactly at the bar's low and high (for a bullish version) or high and low (for a bearish version).
All three variants describe the same underlying idea, one side dominated the bar, but only the full Marubozu has zero wick on both ends. A candle with even a small wick on one side belongs to the Opening or Closing variant, not the full pattern.
Marubozu Example
The chart below shows a deterministic, illustrative example: a trend leading in, a bullish Marubozu forming, then two possible continuations, a confirmation (momentum follows through in the same direction) and a failure/look-alike (price reverses instead). Toggle between them to see why the Marubozu alone doesn't guarantee the outcome.
How to Trade a Marubozu
Continuation or reversal, depending on context
A Marubozu signals strong conviction and one-sided control for the entire bar. Appearing during an established trend, it's often read as a continuation signal, momentum remains strongly one-sided. Appearing at a potential reversal point after an opposing trend, it can signal the start of a strong new move in the other direction.
Setting a practical invalidation level
Because there is no wick to define a natural stop or invalidation level the way a hammer's low or a doji's range does, some traders use the bar's own open (for a bullish Marubozu) or close (for a bearish Marubozu) as the practical invalidation level instead.
Common Marubozu Mistakes
- Calling every strong-bodied candle a Marubozu, without checking that the wicks are genuinely negligible on both ends, a candle with even a small wick on one side is an Opening or Closing Marubozu variant, not a full one.
- Assuming it's always a reversal signal, a Marubozu can just as easily be a continuation signal depending on the trend it appears in.
- Ignoring volume, volume should typically be elevated on a genuine Marubozu, and skipping that check makes it easy to misread a low-conviction bar as a strong one.
Marubozu vs. Similar Patterns
| Pattern | Body size | Key difference from a Marubozu |
|---|---|---|
| Marubozu | Full body, no wicks | Baseline, open/close sit exactly at the extreme low/high |
| Belt Hold | Full-ish body, one wick | No wick at only ONE end (the open); does have a wick at the other end, a less extreme version |
| Long Bullish/Bearish Candle | Long body, some wick both ends | Has visible wick on both ends, unlike a Marubozu's clean edges |
| Doji | Near zero | Opposite extreme, open and close nearly equal instead of at opposite ends of the range |
Limitations of the Marubozu Pattern
A Marubozu describes how one bar's open and close relate to its range, it doesn't tell you why the move happened, what volume accompanied it, or whether the next bar will continue or reverse. The same shape can appear as a continuation in an established trend or as the start of a reversal at an exhausted one, so the bar alone doesn't decide which. Like any single-bar pattern, it works best combined with trend context, volume confirmation, and a defined invalidation plan, not used in isolation.
No Wicks Is a Property of the Timeframe
A marubozu shows a long body with little or no shadow, read as one side controlling the session from open to close. It is worth remembering that the absence of wicks depends on the interval you are looking at. The same period rendered on a shorter timeframe will show pullbacks that the aggregate bar concealed, so a session that appears to have moved in a straight line usually did not.
That does not undo the reading. Closing at or very near the extreme of the range is a genuine statement about who finished in control, and it is a stronger version of the long-body signal precisely because the close gave nothing back.
Where it appears decides what it means. Inside an established trend it reads as continuation; after an extended run it can be the same rush of late participation that ends moves, and the bar looks identical either way. What follows in the next session is the check.
Two practical notes. The definition allows small shadows in most treatments, so a strict no-wick requirement will find very few examples. And the bar range is often large, which means levels taken from it, including any stop, sit correspondingly far apart.
Marubozu FAQs
What does Marubozu mean?
Marubozu means "bald head" or "close-cropped" in Japanese, describing a candle with no wicks at all. The name refers to the shape: a full body with nothing sticking out above or below it.
Is a Marubozu always bullish?
No. A Bullish (or White) Marubozu opens at the low and closes at the high. A Bearish (or Black) Marubozu is the mirror image, opening at the high and closing at the low. Both are Marubozu candles; the direction depends on which end the open and close sit at.
What's the difference between a Marubozu and a Belt Hold?
A Marubozu has no wick at either end. A Belt Hold has no wick at only one end (the open) but does have a wick at the other end, making it a less extreme version of the same one-sided control.
What are Opening and Closing Marubozu?
An Opening Marubozu has a wick only at the close end, with no wick at the open. A Closing Marubozu has a wick only at the open end, with no wick at the close. A full Marubozu has neither wick.
How do you set a stop on a Marubozu trade?
Because a Marubozu has no wick, there's no natural stop level the way a hammer's low or a doji's range provides. Some traders use the bar's own open (for a bullish Marubozu) or close (for a bearish Marubozu) as the practical invalidation level instead.
How much shadow does a marubozu tolerate?
Strictly none, since the name refers to a candle with no shadows at all, and every practical implementation allows some. The tolerance is usually a small fraction of the total range. Because a true zero-shadow bar is rare outside coarsely quoted instruments, essentially all reported marubozu are the tolerant version, and the tolerance is rarely disclosed.
Is a marubozu the same as a wide-range bar?
No, and the two are independent. A marubozu is defined by the absence of shadows, which says nothing about size: a small bar with no shadows qualifies. A wide-range bar is defined by size relative to recent bars and says nothing about shadows. Most descriptions of the marubozu assume a large body, which is a habit rather than part of the definition.
Does a marubozu appear on a Heikin-Ashi chart?
Frequently, and it means something different. A Heikin-Ashi bar with no lower shadow means the averaged open was the lowest of the three inputs, which is a routine outcome during a sustained advance rather than a session that never traded below its open. Heikin-Ashi charts produce runs of shadowless bars by construction, which is the smoothing rather than an observation.
Does including extended hours change whether a bar is a marubozu?
It can eliminate the pattern entirely. Adding pre-market and after-hours trading changes both the open and the extremes, so a regular-session bar that opened exactly at its low may have an earlier and lower print once the overnight is included. The shadowless shape depends on the session definition, which the chart does not display.
References
- CMT Association: Technical Analysis Body of Knowledge and Research
- CFA Institute Research and Policy Center: Investment Research
- Steve Nison, Japanese Candlestick Charting Techniques (1991), the book credited with popularizing Japanese candlestick analysis in Western markets.
- SEC Investor.gov: Introduction to Investing