Candlestick formation · Bullish
What is it, in one line
A red body followed by a green close barely into it.
Bullish · 2 candles · verdict: rule and thresholds below
A red body followed by a green close barely into it. The engine checks the formation as an executable condition over open, high, low and close, with a trend filter applied before the count is kept.
Method
A long down candle followed by an up candle opening below its low and closing barely at the previous close — a recovery that stops almost immediately. The weakest of the piercing family.
The traditional claim
Traditionally read as a continuation, because the rally failed to reclaim anything meaningful.
How this detection is wrong
Four formations share these two candles and differ only in where the second closes: on-neck at the prior low, in-neck at the prior close, thrusting inside the lower half of the body, piercing above the midpoint. Only one can be true at a time.
Published so the count can be reproduced. Every figure below is a parameter of the rule, not a preference: change one and the occurrence count changes with it.
| Parameter | Meaning | Default |
|---|---|---|
| trendPeriod | bars of prior trend inspected | 5 |
| maxPriorSlope | prior slope must be below | -1 |
| minPriorBodyAtr | the preceding body, at least, in ATR | 0.5 |
| matchTolAtr | how closely two levels must match, in ATR | 0.08 |
| atrPeriod | bars of ATR used to size everything below | 14 |
These share enough geometry that a detector can return more than one of them on the same bar. The engine reports every match rather than picking a winner.
Every pair on the site that can be mistaken for another, and what separates each: the look-alikes index.
A long down candle followed by an up candle opening below its low and closing barely at the previous close — a recovery that stops almost immediately. The weakest of the piercing family. The detector also requires a prior downtrend, so the same shape in the wrong context is not counted.
It is read as bearish. Traditionally read as a continuation, because the rally failed to reclaim anything meaningful.
Four formations share these two candles and differ only in where the second closes: on-neck at the prior low, in-neck at the prior close, thrusting inside the lower half of the body, piercing above the midpoint. Only one can be true at a time.
As an executable rule over open, high, low and close, with 5 named parameters — including bars of prior trend inspected 5, prior slope must be below -1, the preceding body, at least, in ATR 0.5 — all published on this page so the count can be reproduced. Strict and loose variants are defined as well, so the sensitivity of the count to those thresholds is visible rather than assumed.
Measurement pending re-run
No hit rate is published here yet. The run that would supply one was computed on engine ca6d9e36c81c; the engine is now cfb08765de7c. Its candlestick rows included the still-forming bar, and it predates the chart formations entirely, so those figures have been withdrawn rather than published with a caveat. The definition above is unaffected: it is what the detector tests, and no re-run changes it.