Candlestick patterns
Shooting star and three-candle stars
4 min
This lesson covers the shooting star (single candle) and the morning/evening star (three candles) — reversal signals of increasing reliability.
Shooting star
A shooting star has a small body near the bottom and a long upper wick, appearing after an uptrend. Price spiked up during the period but sellers slammed it back down to close near the low — a bearish reversal warning. It is the mirror image of the hammer. (The same shape after a downtrend is an inverted hammer, a bullish hint.)
Morning and evening stars
These are three-candle patterns and are more reliable because they require a fuller story:
- Evening star (bearish, tops a rally): a big up candle, then a small indecisive candle (often a doji) gapping or stalling above, then a big down candle closing deep into the first. Momentum shifted from up, to pause, to down.
- Morning star (bullish, bottoms a decline): the mirror — big down candle, small pause, big up candle.
The general principle
Notice the progression: more candles generally mean a more reliable signal, because the pattern captures a complete shift rather than one ambiguous bar. But more candles also means you act later. Even three-candle stars fail; confirm with location (at support/resistance) and the wider trend before trading them.
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