Candlestick Patterns
Morning Star / Evening Star
Three candles, a big move, a small pause, a big move back, and only the middle one has to stay small.
Drag three candles into the three slots
Six candle cards are on offer, some shaped correctly for the pattern and some decoys. Drag or tap three of them into the three slots in order, then check the assembly. The page runs the real three-candle rule against the actual body sizes and the exact percentage candle 3 closes back into candle 1, and tells you specifically what failed if it does.
Candle cards (drag onto a slot, or tap a card then tap a slot)
How it works
- Candle 1 sets the move. A morning star needs a large red body; an evening star needs a large green body. "Large" here means clearly bigger than candle 2, not just any dark or light candle.
- Candle 2 only has to stay small. Its body needs to be under half the size of candle 1's body, and it can be either color. It can gap away from candle 1 or barely overlap it. Its job is to mark a pause, not to point in any particular direction.
- Candle 3 has to close more than halfway back. The real test measures the exact percentage candle 3's close recovers into candle 1's body: (candle 3 close minus candle 1 close), divided by candle 1's body size, has to exceed 50%. A close-back of 48% fails the same as a close-back of 5%.
- Wrong-slot placement fails for a specific, checkable reason. Dropping an oversized card into the middle slot, or a card that closes short into the third slot, produces the exact same failure a trader would get from misreading the real pattern: the shape looked plausible, but one of the three numeric checks did not clear.
Where this breaks
A technically valid star with a weak candle 3 close is a coin flip
The rule sets its close-back line at 50% because that is the point where candle 3 has erased less than half of candle 1's move. A pattern that barely clears that line, closing back 52% or 55%, has assembled correctly but has not actually recovered much of the ground candle 1 gave up. It passes the mechanical test the same as a pattern that closes back 90%, even though the two are very different trades. The rule tells you the shape is real. It does not tell you how convincingly the reversal actually closed.