When a hammer is only a hammer
A hammer at support with a modest body is not the same signal as a hammer floating in the middle of a range.
Traders love naming hammers. The long lower wick and small body are easy to spot. The mistake we see most in the Daegu studio is treating every hammer as a call to buy.
Location first
Ask where the candle sits relative to the last swing low and the recent range. A hammer that prints after a clear decline into a level you already marked deserves more attention than one that appears after sideways chopping with no defined edge.
Body proportion
Measure the real body against the full high-low range. If the body eats most of the candle, you may be looking at a short-wick bar wearing a hammer label. Our intensive uses a simple filter: lower wick at least twice the body, and the close in the top third of the range.
Next candle honesty
A hammer proposes a pause in selling. The following candle accepts or rejects that proposal. Waiting for a close above the hammer high is slower — and often cleaner — than entering on the hammer’s close alone.
Keep a log for two weeks: every hammer you notice, whether you would have acted, and what happened three bars later. Patterns become useful when your notebook fills with context, not when your vocabulary grows.