Dragonfly Doji
A dragonfly doji forms when a session's open and close are nearly identical and both sit at the top of the range, leaving a long lower wick and effectively no upper wick. It is an extreme rejection candle: price was pushed far lower and returned entirely.
- Bias
- Bullish
- Category
- Candlestick Reversal
- Scan cadence
- Every close
What has to be true for a Dragonfly Doji to trigger
- Open and close nearly equal
- Both near the high of the session
- A long lower wick
- Virtually no upper wick
How PatternGrade grades it
A longer lower wick, a smaller body and a cleaner top raise the grade.
Every scanner grades its hits A+, A or B from the pattern's own measurable structure. The grading is deterministic — the same chart always produces the same grade. It describes how closely the chart matches the pattern, not how likely anything is to happen; no hit rate or probability is attached to a grade. The reasoning is set out in the methodology.
What a Dragonfly Doji looks like in practice
A stock opens at $33.05, sells off to $30.90 through the morning, and closes at $33.02, within three cents of the open. The lower wick runs more than two points, the body is a horizontal line, and there is effectively no upper wick. Volume is 2.8 times average, and the low sits fractionally beneath a level that held twice in the previous quarter.
How a Dragonfly Doji fails
The low gets taken out on the following session. Like all single-bar rejection patterns, a dragonfly doji is one day's evidence, and price frequently just continues lower. Dojis are also over-identified: any session that opens and closes near the same price qualifies, and in a quiet stock that happens regularly without meaning anything at all.
What this pattern is telling you
Doji patterns depend on precise open/close relationships that can be an artefact of thin trading. In illiquid names they are frequently noise.
PatternGrade is not a financial advisor and does not give buy or sell recommendations. Targets and stops shown on a pattern are reference levels derived from its geometry, not advice.
How to scan for Dragonfly Doji setups
PatternGrade rescans every liquid US stock (~4,500 names) for this pattern after every close and returns the hits as a graded list, with the pattern drawn on each chart, so you review setups rather than hunt for them.
Join the waitlist to be invited when sign-ups reopen and see the current Dragonfly Doji list, or browse all 75 patterns.
Dragonfly Doji FAQ
What is a dragonfly doji?
A candle whose open and close are nearly equal and sit at the top of the range, with a long lower wick: an extreme rejection of lower prices.
What is a dragonfly doji?
A session where the open and close are essentially identical and both sit at the top of the range, leaving a long lower wick and virtually no upper one. It says the market sold off substantially and then recovered every bit of it by the close.
How is it different from a hammer?
Only by the size of the real body. A hammer has a small body; a dragonfly has none. The interpretation is the same and the dragonfly is the more emphatic version, since the recovery was complete rather than partial.
Is a dragonfly doji always bullish?
Only after a decline. The shape describes rejection of lower prices, which is meaningful when the stock has been falling and much less so otherwise. Appearing after an advance, the same bar is closer to indecision than to a signal.
How much volume should a dragonfly doji have?
High volume strengthens it considerably. It means the rejection involved real participation rather than a thin drift back up. A dragonfly on very light volume is one of the weakest single-bar signals on the chart, and PatternGrade grades accordingly.
Patterns a Dragonfly Doji is mistaken for
- Hammer Reversal
- A hammer has a small but real body. A dragonfly doji has effectively none: open and close are the same. The doji is the more extreme version.
- Gravestone Doji
- The mirror image: a long upper wick with open and close at the bottom of the range, read bearishly after an advance.
- Selling Climax
- A climax is a multi-session capitulation on extreme volume. A dragonfly is a single bar, though the strongest ones occur during climaxes.
Last reviewed . Structure and grading for the Dragonfly Doji are reviewed against the scanner's own rules.