Four-Price Doji

A Four-Price Doji is a candle whose four prices are all the same: the open (the first trade of the session), the high, the low and the close (the last trade). Price never moved. On the chart it has no body (the thick part between open and close) and no shadows (the thin lines above and below, also called wicks). It is drawn as a short flat dash.

It belongs to the Doji family, because the open and the close are equal. But every other doji has a range: price went somewhere during the session and came back. This one went nowhere. That one difference changes what it can tell you.

For price to stay on one number all session, either trades were very few, or price was not allowed to move, or nothing traded at all. Each cause means something different.

Neither, by its shape. The name says only that four prices matched. It is filed with the indecision candles because the open equals the close, but it does not show buyers and sellers fighting to a draw. In most cases it shows almost no fight at all. When price was pinned at a limit, it shows one side winning outright, and the direction is the limit it is pinned to, not anything in the candle's shape.

On a thin day, its high and low are one price that almost nobody traded at, so a close above or below it breaks nothing anyone defended. No later close confirms or fails it in any useful sense. Judge the next normal session on its own terms.

Most candlestick guides read a candle by its shape: where it closed, how long its shadows are. A four-price doji has no shape to read. The useful information is underneath it, in the volume bar (the number of shares that traded that session).

Compare it with a normal day. Most charting tools can show an average of recent volume beside the bars. A four-price doji on a few hundred shares, when the stock usually trades tens of thousands, is a session that barely happened. Read the Candlesticks + Volume guide →

Zero volume means no candle. If the volume is zero, nothing traded. Check the news for a halt. If the stock was halted, the dash is the last price before the halt, and the first trade after it can be far away.

A full limit away from yesterday means a lock. On a market with a daily price limit, check how far the dash sits from the previous close (the settlement price, for futures). If it is the whole allowed move, price opened at the cap and stayed there. Volume can be light, because few will trade against the crowd at the cap. That market was one-sided, and anyone on the wrong side might not get filled at all until the lock broke.

Then ask what it says about the stock. A stock that prints these regularly is thinly traded. The spread (the gap between the best price to buy and the best price to sell) tends to be wide, and a large order can move the price against you on the way in and on the way out. That is the practical message a thin-trading dash carries.

The less time a candle covers, the fewer trades it holds. That makes the four-price doji common on some charts and rare on others.

One-minute and other short charts. A quiet minute can hold a single trade, so flat dashes are routine, especially in extended hours. They mean that minute was quiet, nothing more.

Daily charts. An actively traded stock almost never prints one; a single day holds thousands of trades at many prices. On a daily chart it points to a thin stock, a halt or a data problem, or, on a market with daily limits, a lock.

Weekly and monthly charts. A whole week at one price means the security barely traded all week, or was halted all week. Treat it as a question about whether you can trade the stock at all. Read the Candlesticks + Timeframes guide →

All doji open and close at about the same price. The other doji have a range; the four-price doji has none, and that is the whole difference.

A Doji, Long-Legged Doji or Dragonfly Doji records a contest: price traveled, and the shadows show where each side was turned back. A High Wave records an even bigger one. A four-price doji records no contest, so the levels and breaks those guides teach have nothing to work with here.

A four-price doji looks like the calmest candle on the chart. It is usually the emptiest: a session where almost nothing traded, or where price was not allowed to move.

Don't read a verdict into it. Look at the volume, find the reason, and take the lesson it does carry, about how easily that stock trades. Then judge the next session that actually traded.

Reversal Setups lists four-price dojis by the trend before them, so one can appear there as a setup, with a status. That status is the screener's label, not something the candle earned: the shape still has no direction, so check the volume behind each one first.