Shooting star candlestick pattern, measured

Shooting star candlestick pattern: the definition

A shooting star is read on a single candle. StockCharts' ChartSchool introduction to candlesticks describes it this way: a small real body, black or white, a long upper shadow, and a small or nonexistent lower shadow. It forms after an advance, and the page classes it among bearish reversal patterns.

The same page tells what the candle records: prices advance during the session, then close well off their highs. The long upper shadow is the trace of that advance given back. StockCharts adds a threshold: to indicate a substantial reversal, the upper shadow should be relatively long and at least two times the length of the body.

StockCharts' candlestick pattern dictionary sums it up in one line: a single-day pattern that can appear in an uptrend, which opens higher, trades much higher, and then closes near its open. It adds that it looks just like the inverted hammer, except that it is bearish.

What the candle contains stops there: a rise attempted during the period and not held at the close. It does not say who sold, or why. StockCharts also points out that a candlestick does not show the sequence of events between the open and the close: very different sessions draw the same shooting star. And the page speaks of a 'potential' reversal, one that requires confirmation. The measurements quoted below show why that word matters.

Identifying a shooting star: the criteria, and where sources disagree

Two sources were read for the criteria: StockCharts' ChartSchool and Thomas Bulkowski's page on the shooting star, on thepatternsite.com. They agree on the essentials: a single candle, an upward trend before it, a small body, an upper shadow at least twice the body, little or no lower shadow. They disagree on three points, and each one changes the number of shooting stars you will count on the same chart. Pages consulted in October 2026.

The opening gap. For StockCharts, the shooting star forms in the 'star position', that is, after an open that gaps above the previous candle, and that is where its name comes from. Its article on bearish reversal patterns qualifies this at once: it cites one author who requires the gap and another who shows a shooting star formed below the previous close, then concludes that a gap up enhances the pattern without its essence being lost when the gap is missing. Bulkowski asks for no gap.

The doji. Bulkowski writes that the candle looks like a gravestone doji but is not one, because the opening and closing prices are not the same: he asks for a small body, 'but not a doji'. StockCharts, for its part, defines the gravestone doji as a candle whose open, low and close are equal, and treats it separately. If you count the two together, your record mixes two candles these sources keep apart.

The size of the candle. StockCharts' article adds a criterion Bulkowski does not set: the high/low range should be relatively large, compared with the range over the last 10 to 20 days. A small candle with a long shadow among larger candles is therefore not, for that source, a shooting star.

On body colour, however, nothing sets them apart: StockCharts accepts a black or a white body, and Bulkowski sets no colour condition. For the trend, StockCharts suggests looking at the last one to four weeks, candlesticks being short-term patterns. Pick one definition, write it down, and hold it: that is the rule the lesson on candlestick charts sets for every pattern whose authors do not give the same definition.

Shooting star vs inverted hammer, hanging man and hammer

StockCharts sorts these patterns in pairs. The hammer and the hanging man are the same candle, with a small body and a long lower shadow. The shooting star and the inverted hammer are the same candle, with a small body and a long upper shadow. In both pairs, only what comes before changes the name: after a decline, you have a hammer or an inverted hammer, read as potential bullish reversals; after an advance, a hanging man or a shooting star, read as potential bearish reversals.

Shooting star and inverted hammer. The inverted hammer has exactly the drawing of the shooting star, but it forms after a decline. StockCharts reads it as a potential bullish reversal, and notes that the buying pressure seen during the session was not sustained: that is why the page requires bullish confirmation before action. The lesson on the hammer candlestick pattern covers the other pair, and gives its numbers.

Shooting star and engulfing candle. StockCharts shows that several candles can be blended into one, keeping the open of the first, the close of the last and the high and low of the whole. Blended that way, a bearish engulfing pattern becomes a shooting star. The two patterns therefore describe the same move, a rise and then its surrender, over one period or two. The lesson on the engulfing candle details the two-candle version.

Shooting star, spinning top and harami. A candle whose two shadows are both long is not a shooting star: it is a spinning top, which StockCharts reads as indecision. And the bearish harami is another pattern read as a reversal after a rise, but over two candles, the second sitting inside the body of the first.

What the measurements say about the shooting star

In theory, it is a bearish reversal. Thomas Bulkowski measured what actually happens. On his page, the shooting star acts as a bearish reversal 59% of the time: slightly fewer than six times in ten, price closes below the bottom of the candle, which he calls a downward breakout. He writes that he considers this near random performance, and not to depend on it, even though price reverses more often than not.

His other numbers point the same way. Out of 103 candlestick patterns ranked, the shooting star has a frequency rank of 37 and an overall performance rank of 55, which he places mid list. According to his glossary, that rank orders the price changes recorded 1, 3, 5 and 10 trading days after the breakout. Its best average move ten days after the breakout is 3.86%, and it comes after an upward breakout, in a bear market: in that case the rise carried on. Bulkowski only considers a move good from 6% up, and concludes that this candle looks better than it performs.

These numbers have a population, and it is only partly known. Bulkowski states that his statistics are based on daily charts, not intraday ones, and notes that the day traders he knows depend on the shooting star more often than he thinks they should. The page says the numbers are based on hundreds of trades, and refers to his book, Encyclopedia of Candlestick Charts, for the detail. It names neither the market nor the period measured. Nothing says that 59% carries over to your market and your timeframe.

There is also a two-candle version, which Bulkowski says he found described on websites and which he measures separately on his page on the two-line shooting star: it acts as a bullish continuation 61% of the time, with a performance rank of 52 out of 103. Two pages that talk about a shooting star are therefore not always talking about the same pattern.

An academic study tested candlesticks another way. Ben Marshall, Martin Young and Lawrence Rose applied candlestick rules to the stocks of the companies in the Dow Jones index, from 1 January 1992 to 31 December 2002, measuring returns over the ten days that follow each signal. In their working paper 'Market Timing with Candlestick Technical Analysis', which refers to their 2006 article in the Journal of Banking & Finance, they record 520 white-bodied shooting stars and 465 black-bodied ones. For neither do the returns that follow differ in a statistically significant way from those of days without a signal. Their general conclusion: these strategies are not generally profitable when applied to large U.S. stocks, and basing trading decisions solely on them does not seem sensible; they do not rule out that they complement other techniques.

That leaves the question of shape. The study by Lo, Mamaysky and Wang published in 2000 in the Journal of Finance starts from this observation: the presence of a pattern on a chart is often in the eyes of the beholder. It covers chart patterns and U.S. stocks from 1962 to 1996, not candlesticks. Its approach still applies here: a pattern can only be measured once its rule is written in advance and applied the same way everywhere. The article on day trading patterns gathers Bulkowski's measurements for the other patterns.

A worked example, from the candle to invalidation

The prices are invented. After four rising candles, a candle opens at 103, rises to 109, falls to 100 and closes at 101. Its body measures 103 − 101 = 2. Its upper shadow measures 109 − 103 = 6, that is 3 times the body, above the threshold of two. Its lower shadow measures 101 − 100 = 1, half the body. The body sits in the bottom third of the candle, which is 9 tall. The shape criteria are met; what remains is the trend before it, which is read on the previous candles.

Confirmation. With Bulkowski's marker, the downward breakout is a close below the bottom of the candle, so below 100. In the example, the next candle closes at 99. A sale at that price gets in 2 points lower than a sale at the close of the shooting star, at 101: that is the price of confirmation.

Invalidation. None of the sources read gives a stop level. The clearest marker is the high of the candle, 109: that is the level the market tested and gave back. A close above it is, for Bulkowski, an upward breakout: the rise has continued, and the bearish read is proved wrong. A stop placed at 110, just above, is 110 − 99 = 11 points from the entry. That is what 1R is worth in this example, and it is more than the whole height of the candle. The article on where to place your stop-loss explains why the stop goes where the read is proved wrong, and not at a distance chosen in advance.

What a wrong read costs. With risk set at 99 per trade, an 11-point stop gives a position of 99 ÷ 11 = 9 units. If price climbs back and touches 110, the loss is 9 × 11 = 99, that is −1R, before costs and slippage. To make 1R, price has to fall 11 points below the entry, to 88; for 2R, to 77. A sale at 101 without waiting for confirmation would have had a 9-point stop, so 11 units for the same risk: confirmation costs 2 points of entry and two units of size. The longer the shadow, the further the stop and the smaller the position has to be.

What the example does not say is what comes next. Bulkowski's 59% measures the direction of the breakout, which is precisely the close below 100 the example waits for before entering. It does not say how far price falls afterwards, and his best average ten-day move is recorded after an upward breakout. None of these numbers says 88 will be reached.

Confirmation, invalidation and limits of the shooting star

Confirmation. For StockCharts, most bearish reversal patterns require confirmation, and without it the pattern is neutral: at best it indicates a potential resistance level. For the shooting star, the confirmation it cites is a gap down or a long black candlestick on heavy volume. Candlestick patterns being short-term, usually effective for one to two weeks, the page expects that confirmation within one to three days.

Location. StockCharts writes that these patterns are a means to identify short-term reversals but should not be used alone, and suggests combining them with resistance, weakening momentum or signs of selling pressure. Bulkowski gives two sorting leads, referring to his book: shooting stars that appear, in his words, 'within a third of the yearly low' are the ones that perform best, and he advises selecting them as part of an upward retracement in a downward price trend. In that case the primary trend carries the read, and the candle only dates the end of the retracement. These are hypotheses to check against your own records, not selling rules.

Limits. The first lies in the numbers: 59% on daily charts, a rank of 55 out of 103, and no significant difference in the study on Dow Jones stocks. The second lies in the definition: opening gap required or not, doji counted or not, candle size compared with previous days or not. An indicator that prints a shooting star on your chart applies one of those definitions, not all of them. The third lies in the timeframe: the measurements quoted are on daily data, and nothing carries them over as they stand to a five-minute candle.

In your journal. None of these readings is an order to buy or sell: they are conventions, to be tested on your market and your timeframe with the method in the article on how to backtest a trading strategy. Tradoshi does not detect candlestick patterns: you spot the shooting star on your chart, with the definition you chose. The journal serves the next step: you tag each trade taken on that reading, for example 'shooting star, shadow of 2 bodies, confirmed', and the dashboard filters by tag to show what it has given you, personally.

Where the pattern comes from: the history of candlestick charts

The shooting star belongs to the vocabulary of Japanese candlesticks, and the sources tell its history with caution. StockCharts writes that the Japanese began using technical analysis to trade rice in the 17th century, that, according to Steve Nison, candlestick charting first appeared sometime after 1850, and that much of the credit goes to a legendary rice trader named Homma from the town of Sakata, whose ideas were likely modified and refined over many years. Marshall, Young and Rose write, citing another author, that the technique dates back to the mid 1700s and to Munehisa Homma, at the rice exchange in Sakata.

The two accounts therefore do not give the same date, and neither says that today's patterns were drawn as they are back then. What is dated is more recent: according to Marshall, Young and Rose, candlesticks were introduced to the Western world by Steve Nison in 1991, with his book Japanese Candlestick Charting Techniques. An old pattern is not a verified pattern: measurement, and your own record, say what it is worth.

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