Candlestick formation · Bullish
What is it, in one line
A bullish engulfing confirmed by a third green close.
Bullish · 3 candles · verdict: rule and thresholds below
A bullish engulfing confirmed by a third green close. 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 bullish engulfing followed by a third up candle closing above the second candle’s close — the engulfing plus its confirmation.
The traditional claim
Traditionally read as a confirmed engulfing, and often cited as one of the stronger three-candle formations.
How this detection is wrong
Contains a bullish engulfing by construction. The gap between the engulfing count and this count, on the same data, is the price of waiting for confirmation.
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 | 0.3 |
| 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 bullish engulfing followed by a third up candle closing above the second candle’s close — the engulfing plus its confirmation. The detector also requires a prior downtrend, so the same shape in the wrong context is not counted.
It is read as bullish. Traditionally read as a confirmed engulfing, and often cited as one of the stronger three-candle formations.
Contains a bullish engulfing by construction. The gap between the engulfing count and this count, on the same data, is the price of waiting for confirmation.
As an executable rule over open, high, low and close, with 4 named parameters — including bars of prior trend inspected 5, prior slope must be below -1, the preceding body, at least, in ATR 0.3 — 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 downtrend, its mirror a preceding uptrend.
Three Outside Down: A bearish engulfing, then a third candle closing below the second.