Hanging man

Geometry alone cannot tell the two apart. A hanging man has the same small upper body, the same dominant lower wick and the same short or absent upper wick as a hammer. The only distinguishing fact is what came before it: a hammer forms after a decline, a hanging man after an advance. The name is therefore a statement about context, and the candle carries none of that context inside itself.

The interval it summarises is one in which price fell substantially below the open during a rising move and was bought back before the close. Conventions read that as evidence that supply was present at the level, not as a completed turn, and most require a lower close on a following candle before treating the shape as confirmed.

The trip-up follows straight from the definition. Because the classification rests entirely on a judgement about the preceding trend, and a trend is a reading rather than a measurement, the same candle is labelled a hammer on one timeframe and a hanging man on another with no arithmetic in dispute. Some practitioners hold that the distinction carries real information about who was active in the interval; others hold that identical geometry cannot mean two different things and treat both as a single shape whose meaning is supplied by its surroundings.