# Hammer candlestick pattern

> A hammer is a candle with a long lower wick and a small body at the top of the range — a session where sellers drove price well down and buyers took all of it back before the close.

Canonical: https://patternsradar.com/learn/hammer

The shape is a small body sitting at the top of the bar with a long shadow hanging below it. That shadow is the story: at some point in the session, sellers had price far under the open, and by the close every bit of that ground had been retaken. The bar records a sell-off that was attempted and rejected inside a single day — supply showed up, and demand absorbed it at a price the market could see.

The rejection only means something if there was genuine selling to reject, which is why context is the whole trade. A hammer in the middle of a quiet range is noise; a hammer after a decline is the first measurable evidence the decline met a buyer. The site's hammer-oversold scan builds this in: pattern is hammer with RSI(14) under 40, so the long lower wick prints where the chart has actually fallen far enough for a rejection to matter.

Hammers are common, and without the oversold condition most of them lead nowhere — the shape alone tests close to chance on an arbitrary chart. Even in context, a hammer is a one-session claim that needs the next bars to honour it; a close back below the hammer's low cancels the story outright. The hit-rate replay on the scan page lets you test the filtered version against a year of sessions rather than take the folklore on trust.

## In Sift

Written as `pattern is hammer`. A working scan — stocks printing a hammer while oversold:

```sift
where pattern is hammer and rsi(14) < 40
```

1 of the 500 most-traded NSE stocks match today, as of 2026-08-21.

## Scans that use it

- [Hammer while oversold](https://patternsradar.com/screener/hammer-oversold.md): A long lower wick after a decline, with RSI still under 40.

## Common questions

### Is a hammer candlestick bullish?

It leans bullish, but only in the right place. The long lower wick records a sell-off that was fully bought back, which is meaningful after a decline and close to meaningless mid-range. Screened with an oversold condition such as RSI under 40, the pattern points at charts where the rejection has something to reverse.

### What is the difference between a hammer and a hanging man?

The bar is identical — small body on top, long lower wick. The name changes with location: after a decline it is called a hammer and read as a rejected sell-off; after an advance the same shape is called a hanging man and read as a warning. The scanner flags the geometry; a context filter like RSI supplies the location.

### How reliable is the hammer pattern?

Alone, not very — hammers print constantly and most resolve as nothing. Its record improves when the chart is genuinely washed out, which is why the site's preset pairs it with RSI under 40. Rather than quoting a number, replay the scan on its page against past sessions and read the hit rate the data actually produces.