What indecision actually looks like on a 15-minute candle
Indecision is a word that hides the work. Here is what we ask students to write instead when a bar fails to travel.
If a candle has a small body, someone in every group will say indecision. The word sounds careful. It usually means the speaker has not looked at the bars on either side or at the time of day.
A small body at 12:30 on a London chart is often just lunch. Participation thins. The bar cannot travel because fewer people are there to make it travel. That is not a philosophical pause. It is a clock fact. Write 'small body, lunch hour, range already set at 11:00' and you have said something you can check next week.
A small body at 08:15 after a large 08:00 bar is different. The first hour still has people in it. A pause after a large opening bar can be digestion, or it can be the start of a failed opening drive. You only find out from the next closes. Calling 08:15 indecision postpones the work you are supposed to be doing: comparing this bar's range with the opening bar and waiting.
Inside bars deserve the same suspicion. An inside bar during a wide morning range is a smaller fact than an inside bar that appears right after a break of the session high. Location first, name second. In the foundations workshop we ban the word indecision for the first hour of the day. Students groan, then write better sentences.
If you need a replacement phrase, use one of these: small body relative to the last three bars; inside the prior bar; lunch liquidity; failed to leave the morning range. Each one can be marked on paper. Indecision cannot.