Shooting Star

What is the Shooting Star?

The Shooting Star appears at the top of an uptrend. The candle's body is small and sits near the bottom of the range. The upper wick is at least 2x the body length, and there is little to no lower wick.

The pattern shows that buyers tried to push higher during the session — and failed. Sellers stepped in at the highs and drove price all the way back down to the open. The small body at the bottom of the range shows sellers won the session decisively.

How to identify a Shooting Star

Three confirmations:

1. Small real body in the lower third of the candle's total range. 2. Upper wick at least 2x the body length. 3. Little to no lower wick (less than 5% of the total range).

The Shooting Star must form at the top of an uptrend. The same shape at the bottom of a downtrend is an Inverted Hammer.

Bearish-bodied Shooting Stars are slightly stronger than bullish-bodied ones, but the long upper wick at trend tops is the primary signal.

How to trade the Shooting Star

Standard rules.

Confirmation entry: Wait for the next candle to close below the Shooting Star's low. Enter short on the close. Stop loss above the Shooting Star's high. First target at the previous swing low or 1.5x the stop distance.

Aggressive entry: Enter short on a 50% retracement of the upper wick during the next candle. Tighter stop (just above the Shooting Star's high), but higher whipsaw rate.

Shooting Stars at major horizontal resistance levels or at the 200 EMA produce some of the highest win-rate single-candle reversal setups in price action. Skip Shooting Stars that form mid-range — context matters more than the candle shape.

More patterns and definitions in the forex glossary, or see them stacked on real charts in the trading blog.

Shooting Star FAQ