Directional moves come in impulses — fast legs with big bodies and shallow pauses. What follows is corrective: overlapping candles, wicks both ways, shrinking ranges. The skill is telling a PAUSE (trend resumes) from EXHAUSTION (trend is done). Get that right and both trend-following and reversal trading open up.
Exhaustion tells
- Climax candle: the biggest candle of the whole move appearing AFTER a long run — the last buyers panicking in.
- Follow-through failure: a strong candle immediately answered by an equal opposite one. Someone sold the strength hard.
- Shrinking bodies at new extremes: price makes a marginal new high but each push carries less force.
- Wicks growing against the move: rejection is building at every attempt.
Momentum dies BEFORE price turns. The peak candle is rarely the turn — the failure to follow through after it is.
This pairs directly with the reverse-cross playbook: the 'large first move' you're told not to chase is usually showing these exact exhaustion tells by the time the crossback triggers.