Pattern Detail

Bearish One Black Crow

Two-candle bearish reversal: a single down candle that opens inside a prior up candle and closes below its open.

A real Bearish One Black Crow on NQ daily bars, Nov 5, 2008. Price then followed through 10.3% over the next 5 bars. The bright candles are the pattern; the dimmed bars are surrounding context.
A real Bearish One Black Crow on NQ daily bars, Nov 5, 2008. Price then followed through 10.3% 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)

47.6%

Reliable

Offered at least 1× its risk before the stop, vs 40.4% for a random short entry (+7.1 pts).

Move size vs normal

1.06×

Realized range over the next 20 bars vs a random bar. About normal.

Typical room (20-bar)

1.23R

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

Summary

Offered at least 1R of room 47.6% of the time vs 40.4% for a random short entry — a 7.1-point gap, wider than the ±0.9-point margin of error from chance, and it holds across the sample. A real, if modest, tendency to offer more room than the market alone.

Room offered, this setup vs a random short entry

Outcome This setup Random entry Edge
Offered ≥ 1R 47.6% 40.4% +7.1
Offered ≥ 2R 28.7% 27.4% +1.3
Offered ≥ 3R 18.7% 19.8% -1.1
Stopped < 1R 49.9% 58.1% -8.1
Went sideways 2.5% 1.5% +1.0

11,545 occurrences · 1,146,594 random-entry controls · 20-bar horizon

A bearish one black crow is a two-candle turn at the top. An up candle runs with the trend, then a single down candle opens below the prior close, falls through the session, and closes below the prior open. That one dark candle eats into the gains of the green bar before it. After a run, that decisive red close says the buyers have been pushed back.

How to spot it

  • The market is rising into the pattern.
  • The first candle is an up (green) candle.
  • The second candle is a down (red) candle.
  • The second candle opens below the first candle’s close.
  • It closes below the first candle’s open, taking back the prior gain.

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 green candle keeps the uptrend alive, so buyers close it still in charge. The next bar opens below that close, the first crack in the run, and instead of recovering it falls through the whole session. By the time it settles, the close sits below where the prior up candle even opened. One red bar has swallowed the entire gain of the green one before it.

That reach is what gives the bar its weight. It is not a small pullback that nibbles at the top of the rally, it erases a full session of buying in a single move. Sellers opened with the advantage and pressed it the whole way down, and buyers never managed a stand. After a sustained climb, a candle that takes back that much ground says the people who were lifting price have been pushed onto the back foot, and the side that was passive has stepped forward with force.

The takeover shows in how far the close drops. Whether a turn this decisive tends to keep going lower is what the figures below answer.

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 One Black Crow Firings (20)

Based on data through Apr 29, 2026

Time Risk (pts) Room offered Result
Apr 29, 2026, 3:05 PM CDT 126.5 Open
Apr 29, 2026, 1:25 PM CDT 27 1.06R Ran ≥1R
Apr 29, 2026, 11:55 AM CDT 22.75 1.29R Ran ≥1R
Apr 29, 2026, 8:15 AM CDT 31 3.00R Ran ≥1R
Apr 29, 2026, 3:30 AM CDT 37.25 0.18R Stopped
Apr 29, 2026, 12:55 AM CDT 12.5 0.00R Stopped
Apr 28, 2026, 9:20 PM CDT 18.5 0.84R Stopped
Apr 28, 2026, 7:15 PM CDT 14.75 0.00R Stopped
Apr 28, 2026, 1:30 PM CDT 23 0.30R Stopped
Apr 28, 2026, 5:05 AM CDT 31.5 3.00R Ran ≥1R
Apr 27, 2026, 10:40 PM CDT 6.5 2.62R Ran ≥1R
Apr 27, 2026, 7:50 PM CDT 9.25 2.41R Ran ≥1R
Apr 27, 2026, 3:00 PM CDT 21.75 0.76R Stopped
Apr 27, 2026, 11:20 AM CDT 16.75 0.07R Stopped
Apr 27, 2026, 7:55 AM CDT 18 3.00R Ran ≥1R
Apr 27, 2026, 1:30 AM CDT 21.75 1.92R Ran ≥1R
Apr 26, 2026, 10:35 PM CDT 6.75 2.70R Ran ≥1R
Apr 26, 2026, 9:00 PM CDT 9.75 2.23R Ran ≥1R
Apr 26, 2026, 7:30 PM CDT 9.5 0.00R Stopped
Apr 24, 2026, 2:20 PM CDT 21.75 3.00R Ran ≥1R

Sample backtest

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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