The short answer
A tweezer top is two adjacent candles that reach almost exactly the same high after an advance. Price tested one level twice and was turned away both times, which marks the level as one sellers are actively defending.
Drawn to the real proportions the formation rules describe. Lead-in candles are dimmed; the pattern itself is bracketed.
- Traditional bias Bearish
- Type Reversal
- Built from Two candles
- Context After an advance
How to spot it
- Two consecutive candles, or two very close together, share nearly the same high.
- It forms at the top of an advance.
- The bodies can differ; the matching highs are the pattern.
- It is stronger when the second candle closes lower than the first.
What it actually means
A level that rejects price once might be coincidence. Rejecting it twice in consecutive sessions, at nearly the identical price, is evidence that supply is sitting there deliberately. The pattern is really a two-session micro version of a double top, and it is read the same way.
What confirms it
A close below the low of the second candle, which says the level held and price is leaving it.
What invalidates it
A close above the shared high. Once that level goes, the defended supply is gone and the read inverts.
Where people get it wrong
How exact the match has to be is genuinely unsettled, which makes the pattern easy to see everywhere once you start looking. On a volatile instrument two highs within a few ticks may be noise rather than a defended level. Which direction it actually resolves is contested in the literature rather than settled, so it reads best as a marker of where a level sits, not as evidence on its own.
Common questions
- Is the tweezer top bullish or bearish?
- The traditional reading is bearish. A level that rejects price once might be coincidence. It carries that reading only after an advance.
- What confirms a tweezer top?
- A close below the low of the second candle, which says the level held and price is leaving it.
- When does the tweezer top stop working?
- A close above the shared high. Once that level goes, the defended supply is gone and the read inverts. Beyond that, how exact the match has to be is genuinely unsettled, which makes the pattern easy to see everywhere once you start looking.
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Formation rules follow Japanese Candlestick Charting Techniques by Steve Nison. Reviewed 2026-09-14.