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Doji — Structure & sessions, on the price chart.
What Doji measures
The threshold is inclusive: a body measuring exactly 10% of the range qualifies, so a setting described as a 10% tolerance behaves the way it reads. Setting the tolerance to 0 narrows the test to the perfect doji, where the close matches the open exactly, which is useful on instruments with wide bars. A bar with zero range produces no marker at all: with both sides of the inequality collapsing to zero the test would be trivially satisfied and every flat overnight bar would be painted, so the indicator treats a rangeless bar as carrying no information rather than as a doji.
The formula, as implemented
This is not how the indicator is usually defined elsewhere — it is what the shipped code computes, documented next to the implementation:
Doji — corps négligeable devant le range : |close − open| ≤ tolerance · (high − low) Seuil INCLUSIF (≤) : « tolérance 10 % » doit accepter un corps à exactement 10 % du range. Défaut 0.1 — la convention usuelle ; 0 donne le doji PARFAIT (close == open), utile sur des barres à gros range. range = 0 → AUCUN marqueur : une barre sans range n'est pas un doji, c'est une barre sans information (0 ≤ tol·0 serait trivialement vrai et peindrait toutes les barres plates de la nuit). Marqueur : dot au CLOSE — le doji est un fait d'indécision, sans direction.
How to read it
- A dot means the bar finished where it started after trading through a range — the auction explored and came back.
- The range matters as much as the marker: a wide-range doji and a two-tick doji describe very different amounts of activity ending in the same place.
- Where the doji sits matters too — one at the edge of the session's range is a different observation from one in the middle of a balanced area.
- Long stretches of dots in thin hours usually reflect low participation rather than a meaningful stand-off.
- Because the marker is shape-only, open the bid × ask footprint of the flagged bar if you want to know whether the indecision came from two-sided trade or from absorption.
Parameters and defaults
The tolerance runs from 0 to 0.5 in steps of 0.01, with 0.1 as the default. Raising it toward 0.5 progressively admits ordinary small-bodied bars and will flood the chart with markers; lowering it to 0 restricts the indicator to bars where the close and open are exactly equal. The colour (#fdd835 by default) is the only other setting.
| Parameter | Type | Default | Range |
|---|---|---|---|
| Body / range tolerance | number | 0.1 | 0 – 0.5 |
What it does not show
One ratio cannot tell doji shapes apart — a long-legged doji, a dragonfly with its long lower wick and a gravestone with its long upper wick all satisfy the same inequality and receive the same dot. The test reads four prices, so a doji printed on heavy two-sided trade is indistinguishable from one printed on a handful of contracts. Low-liquidity sessions and small-tick instruments produce qualifying bars for mechanical reasons. And the dot describes a bar that has closed; it makes no statement about the one that follows.
Related indicators
- Session High/Low — Structure & sessions
- Opening Range — Structure & sessions
- IB Extensions — Structure & sessions
- Classic Pivots — Structure & sessions
- Camarilla Pivots — Structure & sessions
- Naked POC — Structure & sessions
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Frequently asked questions
- What body tolerance should a doji use?
- This indicator defaults to 0.1, meaning the body must be no more than 10% of the bar's high-to-low range, which is the common convention. The comparison is inclusive, so a body at exactly 10% of the range still qualifies. Raising the tolerance flags more bars, including ordinary small-bodied ones; lowering it flags fewer.
- Why is a completely flat bar not marked as a doji?
- A bar whose high equals its low has no range, so the test would compare zero against zero and pass automatically. The indicator excludes those bars deliberately: a bar with no range carries no information about indecision, since nothing was explored and given back. This mainly affects quiet overnight bars, which would otherwise all be marked.
- Can I make the doji indicator only show exact dojis?
- Yes — set the tolerance to 0. The test then requires the close to equal the open exactly, which is the strict definition of a doji. On instruments with a coarse tick grid this still happens regularly; on instruments with fine ticks it becomes rare.