Pattern Detail

Bearish Identical Three Crows

Three-candle bearish reversal after a rally: three long down candles in a row, each opening right at the prior candle's close.

A real Bearish Identical Three Crows on NQ hourly bars, Nov 7, 2012. 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 Identical Three Crows on NQ hourly bars, Nov 7, 2012. Price then followed through 1.2% 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 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)

41.2%

Not reliable

Offered at least 1× its risk before the stop, vs 41.5% for a random short entry (-0.3 pts).

Move size vs normal

0.88×

Realized range over the next 20 bars vs a random bar. Precedes a quieter stretch.

Typical room (20-bar)

0.99R

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

Summary

Offered ≥1R 41.2% of the time vs 41.5% for a random short entry. The 0.3-point gap is no bigger than the ±6.2-point margin of error you would get by chance from 245 occurrences. Not a reliable edge.

Room offered, this setup vs a random short entry

Outcome This setup Random entry Edge
Offered ≥ 1R 41.2% 41.5% -0.3
Offered ≥ 2R 13.5% 27.0% -13.5
Offered ≥ 3R 6.9% 18.8% -11.8
Stopped < 1R 30.6% 55.6% -25.0
Went sideways 28.2% 2.9% +25.2

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

An identical three crows is a steady, heavy slide off a top. Three long down candles fall in a row, and each one opens right at the close of the candle before it. There is no bounce between them, just sellers stepping back in at the same level over and over. The even, stair-step decline shows control has flipped firmly to the downside.

How to spot it

  • The market is rising into the pattern.
  • All three candles are long down (red) candles.
  • Each candle opens at, or very near, the prior candle’s close, so there is no gap between them.
  • Each closes lower than the one before, building a clean stair step down.
  • The more even and uninterrupted the three steps, the more textbook the shape.

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

After a rally, the first long red candle says sellers have arrived with force. What makes this shape distinctive is what happens at the open of each bar that follows. There is no bounce, no gap, no overnight relief. Each candle opens right at the prior close and then sellers drive it lower again from that exact level.

That is the story: every time the decline pauses, sellers step back in at the same price rather than letting buyers lift it. Buyers get no foothold between the bars, so the move comes down in an even stair-step instead of a jagged fight. Control has flipped from the buyers who ran the rally to sellers who now reset the floor three bars running, calmly and without giving an inch back.

A heavy, uninterrupted slide off a top looks decisive. How much room that decisiveness tends to offer is what the numbers below lay out.

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 Identical Three Crows Firings (20)

Based on data through Apr 29, 2026

Time Risk (pts) Room offered Result
Feb 20, 2026, 5:00 AM CST 83.5 0.72R Flat
Jan 8, 2026, 6:55 PM CST 27.75 1.39R Ran ≥1R
Sep 4, 2025, 5:25 AM CDT 29.25 0.85R Flat
Sep 2, 2025, 12:05 AM CDT 33 0.20R Flat
Aug 27, 2025, 7:30 AM CDT 39.75 2.24R Ran ≥1R
Jul 14, 2025, 12:45 AM CDT 33.25 0.90R Flat
Apr 21, 2025, 6:20 AM CDT 107.25 0.12R Flat
Apr 4, 2025, 1:15 PM CDT 183.25 0.98R Flat
Oct 15, 2024, 1:00 AM CDT 14.75 1.05R Ran ≥1R
Jul 11, 2024, 9:15 AM CDT 175 1.20R Ran ≥1R
Jun 14, 2024, 4:34 AM CDT 36.5 2.14R Ran ≥1R
May 28, 2024, 6:50 PM CDT 14.5 2.05R Ran ≥1R
Apr 15, 2024, 12:20 PM CDT 113.75 1.33R Ran ≥1R
Jan 29, 2024, 3:20 AM CST 45.75 0.12R Flat
Oct 25, 2023, 12:25 AM CDT 15.25 1.95R Ran ≥1R
Sep 28, 2023, 7:45 AM CDT 87 0.37R Flat
Sep 14, 2023, 2:25 PM CDT 30.5 0.44R Flat
Jul 21, 2023, 2:00 PM CDT 47 0.82R Flat
Jul 6, 2023, 3:25 PM CDT 14.5 1.03R Ran ≥1R
May 28, 2023, 7:30 PM CDT 25.75 0.80R Flat

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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