The problem with candles and why they are “esoteric” is that people focus on the name and not what the candle is saying. It’s really very straight forward common sense and logic. Seriously. Forget the names, look at the process.
Let’s take the simple example of a Doji. So yes, I am using the name to list candles but focus on the movement of the price not the name. Although, most of the names are descriptive, just Japanese so they mean little to many of us. Doji is Japanese for “the same thing.” Which describes the essence of a Doji. The opening and closing prices are close to if not the same value.
Classically, Doji’s have smaller “wicks” or tails or shadows or whatever you want to call the spikes. The point is that the opening price ends up almost the same as the closing price. Obviously why they were named “the same thing” in Japanese. But think about the price action. A stock opens up, gets pushed up a little bit by the bulls, then get’s pushed down by the bears and yet recovers up close to where it started over the course of the day (or the opposite with initial action down but then back up). Nobody wins and nobody loses in the bull-bear tug-of-war. It’s a tie. Not uncommon to occur with little volume. The simplest conclusion is that there are no strong feelings about this stock at the moment and there is thus group indecision about the direction. It could go up or down tomorrow.
Spinning tops are just fat bodied Doji’s. There is more separation between the opening and closing price so the body is thicker but the action is basically the same. Neither Bulls nor Bears earn ownership of the stock movement.
But, as always mentioned, candles do not occur in a vacuum. The price action of the day needs to be interpreted in association with the preceding candles. Hence, the rice traders that created candles have described (and named) patterns. But again, most are self-obvious if you quit trying to categorize the name and look at what is happening.
The message here is simple, there was a strong trend downward, with Bears winning every day, until the most recent day. It was a Doji. A tie, except in the face of the strong wins it raises the possible shift in the tide. Doesn’t mean absolutely, just that you need to consider the possibility of reversal is much stronger than it was. If short, you may want to get out. If watching, it may be time to enter. I don’t look at candles so much as signals to do something but a warning to consider my course of action dependent upon how the next day starts.
In addition to patterns, there are changes within a single candle that carries stronger messages. Take it a step further with specific types of doji’s such as a gravestone, dragonfly and Long-legged.
Gravestone Doji so named as it often is at the top of an uptrend (or bottom of a downtrend) and shows that while the overall movement of the candle may have tried to repeat the previous days’ moves, it failed and almost reversed. Dragonfly Doji basically the reverse. Same with their cousins, the Hanging man and the Hammer candles, which basically just have larger bodies. They must be interpreted in relation to prior days’price movement.
The figure is a bit confusing, it’s 4 instances smooshed together, but think movement. In the third instance, the Hanging Man, price has been climbing for days, but while it still climbed during the formation of the hanging man, after opening higher, the bears pushed it way down to form the long lower wick. Yet the Bulls recovered and pushed it positive for the day. Probably not a huge gain and likely much less than previous days’ gain, suggesting the Bull’s momentum is waning. Instance 4, the Shooting Star, is a little stronger message as it opened up, it climbed high but got slammed down by the bears and even pushed negative for the day. Both suggest that the market crowd may be getting ready to take profits, fear something, whatever, and things might reverse. You don’t need the names to identify that, just the action.
There are entire books and thousands of Youtube video’s on all this, so apologies for dragging it out but I found myself early on trying to learn names and finally realized I don’t need names to get the key message from the price action. Although, the names start to stick when you read and look at other comments but really don’t matter unless you are writing or trying to discuss with a lot of folks. More importantly, it’s not calculus, it’s common sense and logic that anyone can do. Plus, do not take it as absolute. I never place an after hours move simply based on a candle, but it can be the deciding factor on top of all other indicators and market conditions. Unfortunately, I tend to learn that repeatedly after the fact. Start with a single chart and look at the last 4 or 5 candles for a few days to get a habit started.
Sidenote: My pet peeve with IBD charts is that they only show you the current/last price. I know they are in discussions/planning to add opening price, probably just as a bar chart. Hope they do. It’s funny, in their IBD Live FAQs they specifically state they use TOS for candles and options. Message there I believe. 
I put this is in a separate thread to avoid clogging your original thread. Happy to hear any comments and discuss anything else but wasn’t planning on any further comments.
Happy hunting,
Lakedog