Bullish Abandoned Baby

A bullish abandoned baby is a rare and dramatic three-candle bottom. A long down candle is followed by a doji that gaps completely below it, with no overlap in their ranges. Then an up candle gaps back above the doji, again leaving clean air between them. The doji is stranded at the low, abandoned by both sides, and the sharp reversal around it marks the turn.

The abandoned baby is one of the rare, strict reversal forms Steve Nison catalogues in Japanese Candlestick Charting Techniques (1991), a morning doji star with gaps on both sides.

How to spot it

• The market is falling into the pattern.
• The first candle is a down (red) candle that fits the decline.
• The second candle is a doji whose entire range sits below the first candle. This is the abandoned baby.
• The third candle is an up (green) candle whose entire range sits above the doji.
• Both gaps are clean, with no overlap on either side of the doji.
• The isolation of the doji is what separates this from an ordinary morning star.

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

The psychology

Price has been sliding, and the long down candle says sellers are still firmly in charge. The doji that gaps far below it looks at first like more of the same: another leg lower, fear in the air. But the doji opens and closes at nearly the same level. The selling that drove the gap finds no follow-through. For one whole session, the side that owned the trend cannot push price any further.

Then the third candle gaps clean above the doji, and that empty air on both sides is the giveaway. The market stepped down into the doji and now leaps back up over it without trading through the levels in between. Sellers who pressed the lows got no continuation, buyers seized the gap, and the doji is left stranded at the bottom with no one willing to defend it. The wider and cleaner the two gaps, the more complete that handover of control looks.

Whether that abrupt change of hands carries through is the question the figures below take up.

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 down to the pattern’s invalidation point: the lowest low 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 support 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.