Pin Bar
A candle with a small body and a long wick on one side — a sharp price-rejection signal widely used in price-action trading.
The Pin Bar (short for Pinocchio Bar, a term popularised by price-action trader Martin Pring) describes any candle with a disproportionately long wick on one side and a small body on the other. Hammers and Shooting Stars are specific forms of pin bars.
The long wick represents a "lie" — the market briefly moved in that direction, then snapped back. A bullish pin bar has a long lower wick; a bearish pin bar has a long upper wick. They are most powerful at key support/resistance, Fibonacci levels, or trend lines with confluence behind them.
Example
A bullish pin bar forms at major horizontal support on a daily EUR/USD chart, with the wick piercing below the level before closing back inside the range. Forex traders enter long with a stop just below the wick low.
Related Terms
Hammer
A single candle with a small body near the top and a long lower wick — buyers rejected a sharp intra-session sell-off — a bullish reversal signal.
BeginnerInside Bar
A candle whose entire high-to-low range is contained within the prior candle's range — consolidation and a potential breakout setup.
BeginnerShooting Star
A small body near the bottom with a long upper wick at the top of an uptrend — buyers were rejected at the high — a bearish reversal warning.
BeginnerWick
The thin lines above and below a candle's real body, marking the session's high and low extremes beyond the open/close range.
Beginner