Candlestick formation · Bearish
What is it, in one line
A bullish engulfing that appears at the top of an advance, where it reverses rather than continues.
Bearish · 2 candles · verdict: rule and thresholds below
A bullish engulfing that appears at the top of an advance, where it reverses rather than continues. 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
Mechanically identical to a bullish engulfing — a black body fully covered by the white body after it — but occurring after a rise instead of a decline. The classical reading is that the same shape carries the opposite meaning depending on where it sits: at a top it marks the last buying rather than the first.
The traditional claim
Read as a top signal, and it is the clearest case in the whole vocabulary of context deciding meaning rather than shape.
How this detection is wrong
This shares its shape with bullish-engulfing and is separated from it ONLY by the prior trend, so its no-context variant is meaningless by construction and it is the one formation here whose count is entirely a statement about the trend filter. Read the two together or neither.
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 |
| atrPeriod | bars of ATR used to size everything below | 14 |
| minPriorSlope | prior slope must be above | 0.5 |
| minPriorBodyAtr | the preceding body, at least, in ATR | 0.3 |
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.
What is a Last Engulfing Top candlestick pattern?
Mechanically identical to a bullish engulfing — a black body fully covered by the white body after it — but occurring after a rise instead of a decline. The classical reading is that the same shape carries the opposite meaning depending on where it sits: at a top it marks the last buying rather than the first. The detector also requires a prior uptrend, so the same shape in the wrong context is not counted.
Is the Last Engulfing Top bullish or bearish?
It is read as bearish. Read as a top signal, and it is the clearest case in the whole vocabulary of context deciding meaning rather than shape.
When is a Last Engulfing Top not a Last Engulfing Top?
This shares its shape with bullish-engulfing and is separated from it ONLY by the prior trend, so its no-context variant is meaningless by construction and it is the one formation here whose count is entirely a statement about the trend filter. Read the two together or neither.
How is a Last Engulfing Top detected?
As an executable rule over open, high, low and close, with 4 named parameters — including bars of prior trend inspected 5, bars of ATR used to size everything below 14, prior slope must be above 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.
Same shape, opposite reading
The shapes are close, and the prior trend is what decides which one fired: this rule requires a preceding uptrend, its mirror a preceding downtrend.
Last Engulfing Bottom: A bearish engulfing that appears at the bottom of a decline, where it reverses rather than continues.