Pattern Detail

Bearish Thrusting Line

Two-candle pattern: a down candle gaps up and pushes into the prior up candle but stalls below its midpoint, a weak bounce.

A real Bearish Thrusting Line on NQ daily bars, Jun 17, 2008. Price then followed through 3.5% over the next 5 bars. The bright candles are the pattern; the dimmed bars are surrounding context.
A real Bearish Thrusting Line on NQ daily bars, Jun 17, 2008. Price then followed through 3.5% over the next 5 bars. The bright candles are the pattern; the dimmed bars are surrounding context.

Shown only on the markets where this pattern occurs.

Limited sample (54). Directional at best.

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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)

40.7%

Not reliable

Offered at least 1× its risk before the stop, vs 39.7% for a random short entry (+1.0 pts).

Move size vs normal

2.85×

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

Typical room (20-bar)

1.00R

Average run in favor (capped at 3R), vs 1.04R for a random short entry.

Summary

Offered ≥1R 40.7% of the time vs 39.7% for a random short entry. The 1.0-point gap is no bigger than the ±13.1-point margin of error you would get by chance from 54 occurrences. Not a reliable edge.

Room offered, this setup vs a random short entry

Outcome This setup Random entry Edge
Offered ≥ 1R 40.7% 39.7% +1.0
Offered ≥ 2R 22.2% 27.2% -5.0
Offered ≥ 3R 16.7% 19.7% -3.1
Stopped < 1R 59.3% 59.0% +0.2
Went sideways 0.0% 1.3% -1.3

54 occurrences · 354,524 random-entry controls · 20-bar horizon

A bearish thrusting line is a two-candle pause near the top. An up candle runs with the trend, then the next session gaps higher but sellers drag the close back down into the first candle’s body. The push stalls below the midpoint of that body, so the bounce never reaches halfway. A thrust that falls short like this hints the buyers are losing the upper hand.

How to spot it

  • The market is rising into the pattern.
  • The first candle is an up (green) candle.
  • The second candle gaps open above the first.
  • The second candle is a down (red) candle that pushes back down into the first candle’s body.
  • It stalls below the midpoint of the first candle’s body, falling short of the middle.

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 up candle runs with the trend and hands the session to the buyers. The next bar gaps higher, opening above the prior close, and at that moment the buyers look like they are extending the advance. Then the session turns and sellers drag the close back down into the first candle’s body. The push that started with a gap up ends as a red bar.

What matters is how far that selling reached. It pushed back into the prior body but stalled below the midpoint, so the retracement never even got halfway. Sellers showed up, but they could not undo the buyers’ gain, and the close still sits in the upper part of the prior range. In an uptrend, that failed thrust reads more like a brief check than a turn: the dominant buyers absorbed a probe from the other side and held the higher ground, ready to press on. Still, a thrust that falls short like this hints the buyers’ grip is not as firm as it was.

How often that small wobble actually slows the trend is what the figures below set out to test.

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 Thrusting Line Firings (20)

Based on data through Apr 29, 2026

Time Risk (pts) Room offered Result
Jul 20, 2021, 8:30 AM CDT 49.5 0.70R Stopped
Aug 5, 2020, 8:30 AM CDT 31 0.25R Stopped
Mar 19, 2020, 1:45 PM CDT 28.25 3.00R Ran ≥1R
Mar 18, 2020, 1:58 PM CDT 62 1.66R Ran ≥1R
Mar 17, 2020, 9:20 AM CDT 42 0.00R Stopped
Mar 16, 2020, 10:24 AM CDT 34.5 0.00R Stopped
Mar 13, 2020, 2:05 PM CDT 35 1.36R Ran ≥1R
Jul 10, 2018, 8:30 AM CDT 13.25 0.57R Stopped
Jan 12, 2015, 11:35 AM CST 1.75 3.00R Ran ≥1R
Jul 2, 2012, 8:30 AM CDT 5.5 0.05R Stopped
Sep 13, 2011, 12:15 PM CDT 2.5 1.00R Ran ≥1R
Sep 5, 2011, 9:35 AM CDT 3 0.33R Stopped
Aug 9, 2011, 9:05 AM CDT 8.5 0.56R Stopped
Aug 5, 2011, 11:50 AM CDT 13.25 1.49R Ran ≥1R
May 7, 2010, 10:20 AM CDT 17 1.19R Ran ≥1R
Aug 5, 2009, 8:30 AM CDT 5.25 3.00R Ran ≥1R
Apr 1, 2009, 9:25 AM CDT 4.25 0.41R Stopped
Mar 24, 2009, 1:10 PM CDT 2 0.00R Stopped
Mar 17, 2009, 9:05 AM CDT 3.5 1.36R Ran ≥1R
Mar 16, 2009, 11:40 AM CDT 2.5 0.10R 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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