Candle body

### What it is The body is the thick rectangle. Its two edges are the open and the close. On a green candle the open is the bottom edge and the close is the top. On a red candle it is the reverse. The wicks above and below are separate: they show what price *reached*, the body shows what price *held*. Size is conviction. Large body = strong, one-sided directional move. Small body = a quiet, balanced period, indecision. A series of small bodies is often a coil before a big move. ### The rule that makes the body structural This is why the body is not just a shape. A true break of structure requires price to close with at least **50 percent of the candle body past the wick of the structure point**. Half the body past the wick is the line in the sand. Anything less is a wick test dressed up as a signal. Two details people get wrong: - You measure to the *wick* of the structure point, not to its body. The stricter reference. - There is no relaxed standard on the small timeframes. A 1M, 3M or 5M break must clear the same 50 percent bar as a 1H break. Pretending otherwise is how people talk themselves into trades that were never confirmed. And when the break is only marginal on the highest timeframe of your class, step one timeframe higher to confirm it. A 15M setup gets cycled against the 30M and 1H, a 5M setup against the 3M and 15M. ### Body size at the entry Body size matters again at the trigger, through price delivery. Good delivery is a *smaller* rejection candle forming as close to protected structure as possible: tight stop, entry near the level, RR maximised. A big-bodied rejection candle that forms far from the level is bad delivery. Your stop ends up wider and your entry ends up closer to target, so the ratio shrinks. Sometimes it shrinks under the 1.7 RR floor, and the setup you liked simply is not a trade. ### The mistake beginners make Judging the body of a live candle. Until it closes, the body is a rumour. Forty minutes into an hourly candle, half a body past the level means nothing. Wait for the close, then read what actually happened. Module 9, Lesson 4: Structure Rules and Lesson 16: Price Delivery.