Discover the power of the bullish spinning top candlestick pattern, a promising signal during downtrends that indicates market indecision and potential reversals. Learn how to effectively trade this pattern with confirmation strategies to boost your success rate.
What Is a Bullish Spinning Top Candlestick Pattern?
A bullish spinning top is a candle with a small real body and long upper and lower wicks. The bullish version closes slightly above the open (green/white body), so buyers “win” the session by a little.
The key point, though, is the fight: price pushed up and down hard intraday, and neither side held control for long. That’s why this pattern shows up in lists of important reversal signals—it often marks a shift from one-sided pressure into hesitation.
On a chart, a spinning top is basically indecision. It’s not like a bullish engulfing candle or a hammer where you can clearly see who took control.
Instead, it tells you the market just hit a spot where both bulls and bears could move price, but neither could keep it there. When it prints after a down move, it can be the first sign sellers are losing their grip.
How Do You Identify a Bullish Spinning Top?
Small real body centered between the wicks (often under ~10–20% of the candle’s full range)
Long upper and lower shadows, usually fairly similar in size
Close above the open (slight bullish lean, not a strong bullish candle)
Clear two-way probing of price: pushes up, dumps down, then settles near the middle
What you’re really reading is sentiment. A spinning top says buyers and sellers hit a temporary balance, which can set up the next directional move.
Per common pattern research, spinning tops often show up right before expansion candles. Still, you want confirmation (next candle, volume, RSI, structure) because the spinning top itself doesn’t “promise” a reversal.
How to Trade a Bullish Spinning Top (Entry, Stop, Targets)
Optimal Entry Point Timing
Wait for the confirmation candle to close. Buying while the spinning top is still forming is how you get chopped up, because the whole candle is telling you the market can’t pick a direction yet.
A confirmation close above the spinning top range is the market committing, not you guessing.
Stop Loss Placement and Risk Control
A common stop is below the spinning top’s low / lower wick. That’s the line in the sand where buyers supposedly defended. If price trades back through it, the “buyers stepped in” story is likely wrong.
Log it in your trading journal so you can see over time whether your stops are too tight, too loose, or just poorly placed versus structure.
Trading strategy steps:
Spot a true spinning top: small body, long wicks on both sides
Check location: downtrend + support/demand zone is the higher-quality setup
Compare wick-to-body proportions (don’t force it if it’s just a small candle)
Wait for the next candle to close and confirm direction
Use volume: quiet indecision, then expansion on follow-through is ideal
Enter only after confirmation (close above high or clear bullish continuation)
Stop goes under the spinning top low (or under the nearby swing low if that’s cleaner)
Targets at prior resistance, supply zones, or Fib extensions
Trail stops if momentum builds and structure keeps stepping up
Target Levels and Profit-Taking
First target is usually the nearest obvious resistance: prior swing high, breakdown level, supply block, or a Fib extension if you trade those. If the reversal actually sticks and momentum indicators confirm, you can scale some profit and let the rest run with a trailing stop under higher lows.
Consolidation Phase Recognition
Spinning tops also show up in consolidation. If the broader trend is still bearish and you’re mid-range with no support under you, treat it as chop until price proves otherwise.
The candle is telling you “pause,” not automatically “reverse.”
What Confirms a Bullish Spinning Top Reversal?
A spinning top is neutral by default. It’s a warning that the trend may be stalling, not a green light to hit buy.
Bullish confirmation usually looks like the next candle closing strong and higher, ideally pushing above the spinning top’s high with real momentum. That’s when indecision turns into buyers actually taking the wheel.
Practical confirmation triggers traders watch: a solid bullish follow-through candle, a clean break above the spinning top high, or a gap-up (more common in equities). Studies and trader stats regularly show unconfirmed spinning tops are close to a coin flip, which is why pattern guides keep hammering the same point: wait for the market to prove it.
Structure matters. A bullish spinning top into support in a downtrend is a different animal than one printing directly under resistance. If you’re buying into a ceiling, you’re basically betting on an immediate breakout, not a simple reversal.
What Indicators Help Confirm a Bullish Spinning Top?
RSI to spot oversold conditions and momentum shifts
MACD crossovers to confirm a turn in trend pressure
Moving averages for trend filter and dynamic support/resistance
Bollinger Bands to frame volatility squeeze/expansion and mean reversion
Fibonacci retracements to line up reversal zones with market structure
Multi-timeframe confluence is where it gets cleaner. A daily spinning top that’s sitting on weekly support (or a monthly level everyone has marked) tends to behave better than a random mid-range print.
When timeframes agree, entries are simpler and the risk/reward is usually more rational.
Common Bullish Spinning Top Mistakes Traders Make
The biggest mistake is mislabeling candles. A spinning top needs the body-to-wick imbalance: small body, long shadows. A doji has almost no body.
A random small-bodied candle with short wicks is just… a small candle. If the silhouette isn’t obvious, it’s usually not worth trading.
Another common blow-up is ignoring the trend and location. A spinning top after weeks of selling into a known support shelf is meaningful. The same candle in sideways noise is usually just more noise.
Where it prints is the signal.
Skipping confirmation is the classic rookie entry. Traders see “bullish spinning top” and buy immediately, then the downtrend keeps grinding and they get stopped or forced to bag-hold. The pattern is indecision—confirmation is direction.
"The spinning top alone is neutral and requires confirmation, as it indicates uncertainty rather than a guaranteed reversal, reversals occur about 50% of the time per some studies." - Source: Comprehensive Candlestick Pattern Analysis
Volume and momentum aren’t optional if you want consistency. A spinning top on dead volume can be meaningless. A spinning top into support with absorption, then a high-volume bullish follow-through, is a different setup entirely.
Blending candles with volume, levels, and momentum tools is what keeps you out of low-quality trades.
What Does a Bullish Spinning Top Mean in Market Context?
The small real body tells you open and close were close together—minimal net progress. The long wicks tell you the session wasn’t quiet at all.
Bulls ran it up, bears slammed it down, and then price drifted back toward the middle. That failure to hold either extreme is the hesitation traders care about.
The wicks also show where the market rejected price. A long upper shadow means attempts higher got sold. A long lower shadow means dips got bought.
If the candle closes slightly green after printing a big lower wick, that’s often a subtle “buyers absorbed the dump” message—but it’s still subtle.
How to Read Spinning Top Wick Length (Shadows)
Shadow Feature | Market Signal | Sentiment Indication |
|---|---|---|
Long upper shadow | Rejection of higher prices | Sellers showed up at the highs |
Long lower shadow | Buyers defended support | Selling got absorbed on the dip |
Balanced shadows | Even fight both ways | Pure indecision |
Small body | Little net change | No real control by either side |
Context is the whole trade. A spinning top after a clean selloff, especially into a prior demand zone or weekly support, carries way more bullish weight. In an uptrend, the same candle often just means “pause” or “chop,” not “time to short-cover into a new leg up.”
Volume helps you grade it. Low/declining volume into the spinning top fits the “pressure is fading” idea. Then you want to see volume expand on the confirmation candle—otherwise it’s often just another range day.
Real Trading Examples: Using the Bullish Spinning Top in a Strategy
Picture a major equity index in a steady downtrend, then it tags a well-watched support level and prints a bullish spinning top—small body, big wicks, lots of back-and-forth. If you buy the candle just because it’s there, you often sit through more chop.
The cleaner trade is waiting for the next session to confirm. When the follow-through candle closes strong on higher volume, that’s your trigger. The move that follows is usually the short-cover + fresh bid combo, and that’s where the money is.
Spinning tops work best with confluence. If it prints at a trendline or demand zone while RSI is oversold, the setup has teeth. If price is also reclaiming a key moving average (like the 20-day or 50-day), it’s another clue momentum is rotating.
Backtesting on platforms like TradingView, TrendSpider, or Amibroker can also tell you which mixes actually pay in your market—S&P 500 futures, EUR/USD, or BTC/USDT don’t behave the same.
Timeframe matters too. Day traders need fast confirmation and tight risk, because a spinning top on a 5-minute chart can get invalidated in one candle. Swing traders get more value from daily/weekly spinning tops because those reflect real positioning and flows.
In FX and crypto, wicks are often exaggerated due to 24/5 or 24/7 liquidity and stop runs, so confirmation becomes even more important.
The bullish spinning top is useful when it shows up after selling pressure, at a real level, and then gets confirmed by price and volume. Treat it as a heads-up that control is shifting, not a standalone buy signal.
The traders who do best with it are the ones who wait for proof, manage risk under structure, and only take it when the chart actually makes sense.
How Do You Turn Bullish Spinning Top Setups Into Repeatable Results?
The bullish spinning top is a “maybe” candle: it highlights indecision, but your edge comes from how often your confirmation rules, location filters (support/resistance, trend, multi-timeframe levels), and risk plan produce a favorable outcome. The fastest way to tighten that process is to review each setup the same way every time—what the prior trend was, where the candle printed, what confirmed it, how volume behaved, and whether your stop sat under structure or just under the wick.
A trading journal makes those patterns visible. When you consistently log entries, exits, screenshots, and notes, you can measure whether spinning tops at demand zones outperform mid-range prints, whether certain indicators add value, and how different stop placements affect PnL distribution. Using a dedicated tracker like Rizetrade trading journal analytics dashboard for performance tracking and trade review helps you organize these trades into metrics you can act on—win rate by context, average R, drawdowns, and the specific mistakes (like early entries without confirmation) that keep repeating.