Pattern Detail

Bearish Advance Block

Three-candle bearish reversal after a rally: three up candles whose upper wicks grow longer each bar, showing buyers running out of steam.

A real Bearish Advance Block on NQ daily bars, May 11, 2018. Price then followed through 1.2% over the next 5 bars. The bright candles are the pattern; the dimmed bars are surrounding context.
A real Bearish Advance Block on NQ daily bars, May 11, 2018. Price then followed through 1.2% over the next 5 bars. The bright candles are the pattern; the dimmed bars are surrounding context.
i

How to read this

Everything here is in R, the setup's own risk. 1R is the distance from the entry (the pattern's closing price) to where it would be proven wrong — its highest high over the 3 bars that form it. So "offered 2R" means price ran twice that distance in your favor at some point before the stop. It does not assume you took profit there: a target is a strategy choice.

Room offered (≥ 1R)

37.2%

Not reliable

Offered at least 1× its risk before the stop, vs 41.5% for a random short entry (-4.3 pts).

Move size vs normal

1.13×

Realized range over the next 20 bars vs a random bar. Precedes a bigger move.

Typical room (20-bar)

0.99R

Average run in favor (capped at 3R), vs 1.07R for a random short entry.

Summary

Offered ≥1R 37.2% of the time vs 41.5% for a random short entry. The 4.3-point gap is no bigger than the ±4.7-point margin of error you would get by chance from 422 occurrences. Not a reliable edge.

Room offered, this setup vs a random short entry

Outcome This setup Random entry Edge
Offered ≥ 1R 37.2% 41.5% -4.3
Offered ≥ 2R 27.7% 27.0% +0.8
Offered ≥ 3R 22.7% 18.8% +4.0
Stopped < 1R 62.3% 55.6% +6.7
Went sideways 0.5% 2.9% -2.5

422 occurrences · 1,162,047 random-entry controls · 20-bar horizon

An advance block is a rally that loses its legs at the top. Three up candles climb in a row, so on the surface buyers are still in control. But the upper wick grows longer on each bar, meaning sellers push harder against the high every time. The advance keeps going yet weakens with each step, which often warns that the move is about to roll over.

How to spot it

  • The market is rising into the pattern.
  • All three candles are up (green) candles.
  • Each candle opens inside the prior body, so the rally is still stepping up.
  • The upper wick gets longer on the second candle, then longer still on the third.
  • The growing wicks show buyers reaching higher but getting rejected harder each time.

The dashed box on the chart above marks the three candles on a real occurrence, with the advance before and the move after.

The psychology

Three green candles in a row, each closing higher, looks like a healthy rally. Buyers are still moving price up, and at first glance nothing is wrong. The warning is in the upper wicks, which stretch longer on the second bar and longer still on the third. Each session price reaches for a new high and gets sold back from it, harder every time.

That is the quiet shift. The bulls keep their grip on the close, so the trend still points up, but the cost of each step is rising. Sellers are meeting the advance higher and earlier, and the lengthening tails show how much of every push gets given back before the bar ends. A rally that has to fight this hard for smaller gains is one where the buying is thinning out, even as the candles stay green. Control has not changed hands, but it is slipping.

The tiring is written in those growing wicks. Whether a rally running this short of breath tends to roll over is what the numbers below settle.

Does it actually work?

A pattern is a setup, not a trade, so the honest question is not “did it win” but “how much room did it tend to offer before it was proven wrong.” The tabs below answer that across five futures markets (Nasdaq, S&P 500, gold, crude oil, natural gas) and seven timeframes from one minute to one day.

For each occurrence we measure the room the move offered in units of the pattern’s own risk, then set it against what a random entry on the same market would have done. When the pattern offers more room more often than chance, that shows up as a real edge. When it does not, the page says so plainly.

Read it with the sample size in view. On the faster timeframes a pattern can fire thousands of times, enough to trust. On the daily chart it is far rarer, so treat those numbers as a hint rather than a verdict. Thin samples are flagged for you on the page.

How we measured it

  • Entry is the close of the final candle of the pattern.
  • One unit of risk, 1R, is the distance from that close up to the pattern’s invalidation point: the highest high of the three candles that form it. If price trades through there, the setup is wrong.
  • We then follow the next 20 bars and record how far price ran in your favor, in multiples of that risk, before the stop was hit.
  • Every figure is set against a random entry on the same market and timeframe, so the market’s own drift is accounted for.
  • No profit target and no position sizing. Where you take profit is a strategy choice; this measures only the room the pattern tends to give.

What this page does not cover

  • Volume on the pattern’s candles.
  • Whether the pattern forms at a meaningful resistance level.
  • Pairing it with a trend filter or a confirming signal.
  • A profit target or position sizing. We use the pattern’s own invalidation point as the stop to define risk, but where you take profit, and how much you put on, are strategy decisions this page leaves to you.

Sample Bearish Advance Block Firings (20)

Based on data through Apr 29, 2026

Time Risk (pts) Room offered Result
Apr 15, 2026, 1:35 AM CDT 5.5 2.00R Ran ≥1R
Apr 7, 2026, 11:10 PM CDT 4.5 0.00R Stopped
Apr 7, 2026, 8:10 AM CDT 20.25 0.89R Stopped
Mar 31, 2026, 3:00 AM CDT 0.25 0.00R Stopped
Mar 24, 2026, 1:25 AM CDT 21.5 0.00R Stopped
Mar 19, 2026, 2:10 PM CDT 33.75 3.00R Ran ≥1R
Mar 16, 2026, 7:15 AM CDT 5.5 3.00R Ran ≥1R
Mar 13, 2026, 5:05 AM CDT 12.5 0.00R Stopped
Mar 11, 2026, 10:05 PM CDT 10.75 3.00R Ran ≥1R
Mar 3, 2026, 6:10 AM CST 20.75 0.95R Stopped
Feb 23, 2026, 3:10 AM CST 4 3.00R Ran ≥1R
Feb 20, 2026, 12:50 PM CST 20.75 3.00R Ran ≥1R
Feb 17, 2026, 10:15 AM CST 11.5 0.00R Stopped
Feb 9, 2026, 1:20 PM CST 3.5 0.00R Stopped
Jan 27, 2026, 9:05 AM CST 0.5 0.00R Stopped
Jan 15, 2026, 7:00 PM CST Open
Jan 13, 2026, 6:15 AM CST 9 0.06R Stopped
Jan 8, 2026, 8:05 PM CST 4.75 1.42R Ran ≥1R
Jan 8, 2026, 9:25 AM CST 16.75 3.00R Ran ≥1R
Jan 5, 2026, 9:25 AM CST 10.75 0.00R Stopped

Sample backtests (2)

Real backtested runs of this pattern, with commissions and slippage. Open one for the full equity curve and metrics, or backtest it yourself on your own contract and dates.

Backtest this pattern

Run it on your contracts, timeframes, and dates.