The Japanese Rice Merchant Who Invented Candlestick Trading
Back in the 1700s, in the bustling city of Sakata, Japan, lived a rice merchant named Munehisa Homma.
While most traders focused on numbers, Homma did something different — he studied human emotions behind every trade.
He noticed that fear, greed, and hope shaped the market far more than mere supply and demand.
He began recording rice prices meticulously, observing patterns over weeks, months, and years.
Little did the world know, his insights would later become the foundation of modern candlestick trading.
Homma’s key lesson:
> “The greatest secret of the market is in the human mind, not on the chart.”
He identified simple yet powerful patterns —
the Hammer, Doji, and Engulfing — predicting when buyers would wake up or sellers would dominate.
Today, every crypto trader, from Bitcoin to altcoins, reads candles without realizing they are following the wisdom of a 300-year-old rice merchant.
💡 Takeaway: Markets never change. Only the players and their emotions do. Study the human side, not just the numbers.
