Pattern Detail

Bearish Harami Cross

Two-candle bearish reversal: a doji held entirely inside the body of a large prior up candle, a sign the rally has stalled.

A real Bearish Harami Cross on NQ daily bars, Mar 16, 2017. Price then followed through 1.1% over the next 5 bars. The bright candles are the pattern; the dimmed bars are surrounding context.
A real Bearish Harami Cross on NQ daily bars, Mar 16, 2017. Price then followed through 1.1% over the next 5 bars. The bright candles are the pattern; the dimmed bars are surrounding context.
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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 2 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)

42.7%

Not reliable

Offered at least 1× its risk before the stop, vs 40.4% for a random short entry (+2.2 pts).

Move size vs normal

1.42×

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

Typical room (20-bar)

1.18R

Average run in favor (capped at 3R), vs 1.05R for a random short entry.

Summary

Offered ≥1R 42.7% of the time vs 40.4% for a random short entry. The 2.2-point gap is no bigger than the ±5.8-point margin of error you would get by chance from 279 occurrences. Not a reliable edge.

Room offered, this setup vs a random short entry

Outcome This setup Random entry Edge
Offered ≥ 1R 42.7% 40.4% +2.2
Offered ≥ 2R 31.5% 27.4% +4.1
Offered ≥ 3R 25.4% 19.8% +5.7
Stopped < 1R 57.3% 58.1% -0.7
Went sideways 0.0% 1.5% -1.5

279 occurrences · 1,146,594 random-entry controls · 20-bar horizon

A bearish harami cross is the bullish harami cross flipped. A large up candle runs with the trend, then the next session opens and closes in almost the same spot, a doji, tucked entirely inside the big candle’s body. After a strong push, that sudden balance says the buyers have run out of room. It is a sharper version of the bearish harami, where the small inside candle has barely any body at all.

Steve Nison notes the harami cross in Japanese Candlestick Charting Techniques (1991) as a stronger form of the harami, with a doji as the inside candle.

How to spot it

  • The market is rising into the pattern.
  • The first candle is a large up (green) candle that fits the advance.
  • The second candle is a doji, with the open and close at nearly the same price.
  • The doji’s whole range sits inside the body of the first candle.
  • The stall right after a strong candle is the signal, not a fresh push down.

The dashed box on the chart above marks the 2 candles on a real occurrence, with the advance before and the move after.

The psychology

The large up candle is the rally still working. Price has been rising, and this bar pushes hard in the same direction, closing near its highs with buyers clearly in command. Anyone short is uncomfortable, and the momentum belongs to the people lifting the market.

Then the next session goes nowhere. It opens inside the prior range and closes at almost the same price it opened, a doji tucked inside the big up candle’s body. After a day of confident buying, that sudden balance is telling. The buyers who had been paying up freely can no longer find anyone to pay up against, and the sellers have arrived in just enough size to hold price flat. The advance has not turned over yet, but the eager demand that drove it has gone quiet right at the highs.

A stall at the top is a warning, not a verdict, and the figures below show how often it actually leads lower.

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 two 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 Harami Cross Firings (20)

Based on data through Apr 29, 2026

Time Risk (pts) Room offered Result
Apr 24, 2026, 10:25 AM CDT 6.75 0.00R Stopped
Apr 23, 2026, 1:20 AM CDT 5.5 0.00R Stopped
Apr 22, 2026, 10:55 PM CDT 3 3.00R Ran ≥1R
Apr 17, 2026, 1:40 PM CDT 7.75 3.00R Ran ≥1R
Apr 16, 2026, 1:45 PM CDT 16.5 1.05R Ran ≥1R
Apr 1, 2026, 1:35 AM CDT 14.5 0.00R Stopped
Apr 1, 2026, 12:15 AM CDT 4 0.00R Stopped
Mar 24, 2026, 4:30 AM CDT 13.75 0.51R Stopped
Mar 19, 2026, 9:50 AM CDT 27.5 0.95R Stopped
Mar 17, 2026, 4:30 AM CDT 10.25 3.00R Ran ≥1R
Mar 9, 2026, 2:25 AM CDT 16.5 3.00R Ran ≥1R
Feb 17, 2026, 2:10 AM CST 21.5 3.00R Ran ≥1R
Feb 16, 2026, 5:50 PM CST 15.5 3.00R Ran ≥1R
Feb 2, 2026, 5:40 AM CST 6.25 0.00R Stopped
Jan 26, 2026, 2:35 PM CST 10.75 3.00R Ran ≥1R
Jan 22, 2026, 10:30 AM CST 13.25 0.89R Stopped
Jan 19, 2026, 8:50 PM CST 8.25 3.00R Ran ≥1R
Dec 18, 2025, 8:20 AM CST 7.5 0.00R Stopped
Dec 8, 2025, 3:45 PM CST 4 3.00R Ran ≥1R
Dec 5, 2025, 4:00 AM CST 6.5 0.73R 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

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