On a whiteboard, a hammer and a hanging man are the same drawing: a small real body near the top of the range and a lower wick at least twice that body. Students who learned from a colour poster will still call the red one a hanging man and the green one a hammer. Colour is the last thing we look at.
Ask for the ten bars first
A hammer earns its name only after a decline. The long lower wick has to be a rejection of lower prices that arrived during a fall, not a dip inside a quiet range. A hanging man earns its name only after an advance. The same wick, at the top of a rise, is a warning that buyers failed to hold the lows of the session — not an invitation to buy the dip.
In class we cover the dates on a SET daily and ask one person to describe only the prior trend. If they cannot say “this name has been falling for three weeks” or “this pair has been climbing since early February,” they are not allowed to write either word in the margin. The rule sounds petty. It stops the most common mix-up we see on homework charts.
The next candle is part of the pattern
A hammer that is immediately followed by a close below the hammer’s low is a failed idea, not a delayed one. We treat confirmation as a habit, not a flourish. Nalinee’s marking sheet has a column for “next bar.” Empty next-bar notes come back with a line through the pattern name.
If you are annotating at home this week, try this: photocopy a daily chart, fold the paper so only the left side shows, write the trend in one sentence, then unfold and name the candle. The fold is a cheap version of what we do at the table.