Pattern Detail

Bullish Harami Cross

Two-candle bullish reversal after a fall: a doji held entirely inside the body of a large prior down candle.

A real Bullish Harami Cross on NQ daily bars, Dec 13, 2013. Price then followed through 2.3% over the next 5 bars. The bright candles are the pattern; the dimmed bars are surrounding context.
A real Bullish Harami Cross on NQ daily bars, Dec 13, 2013. Price then followed through 2.3% 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 lowest low 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)

41.0%

Not reliable

Offered at least 1× its risk before the stop, vs 41.8% for a random long entry (-0.8 pts).

Move size vs normal

1.45×

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

Typical room (20-bar)

1.03R

Average run in favor (capped at 3R), vs 1.08R for a random long entry.

Summary

Offered ≥1R 41.0% of the time vs 41.8% for a random long entry. The 0.8-point gap is no bigger than the ±6.1-point margin of error you would get by chance from 251 occurrences. Not a reliable edge.

Room offered, this setup vs a random long entry

Outcome This setup Random entry Edge
Offered ≥ 1R 41.0% 41.8% -0.8
Offered ≥ 2R 25.1% 28.1% -3.0
Offered ≥ 3R 19.5% 19.9% -0.4
Stopped < 1R 58.6% 56.3% +2.3
Went sideways 0.4% 1.8% -1.4

251 occurrences · 1,150,038 random-entry controls · 20-bar horizon

A bullish harami cross is a two-candle bottom that signals selling has stalled. A long down candle comes first, in line with the fall. The next candle is a doji, a bar that opens and closes at nearly the same price, and it sits completely inside the body of that down candle. The big down day showed sellers in control. The doji that follows shows them losing their grip as buyers and sellers reach a standoff.

The harami cross is the doji variant of the harami that Steve Nison singles out in Japanese Candlestick Charting Techniques (1991) as an especially sharp signal.

How to spot it

  • The market is falling into the pattern.
  • The first candle is a long down (red) candle that fits the decline.
  • The second candle is a doji, opening and closing at nearly the same level.
  • That doji sits entirely within the body of the first candle, both its open and close inside the prior range.
  • The smaller and tighter the doji, the cleaner the standoff it marks.

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

The psychology

The long down candle says the sellers are still firmly in charge. Price has been falling, and this bar simply continues the work, closing near its lows with no sign of resistance. Anyone holding long is hurting, and the momentum belongs entirely to the people pressing the market down.

Then the next bar refuses to extend the move. It opens inside the prior range and barely travels at all, finishing right where it began. After a day of one-sided selling, that flat doji is the first time buyers have met the sellers blow for blow. The drop has not reversed yet, but the pressure that drove it has stalled, and a market that was sprinting lower has come to a standstill inside the previous candle.

A stall is not the same as a turn, and whether this one leads to a bounce is what the numbers below sort 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 down to the pattern’s invalidation point: the lowest low 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 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.

Sample Bullish Harami Cross Firings (20)

Based on data through Apr 29, 2026

Time Risk (pts) Room offered Result
Apr 23, 2026, 2:00 PM CDT 19.5 3.00R Ran ≥1R
Apr 10, 2026, 2:50 PM CDT 7.5 0.00R Stopped
Apr 2, 2026, 6:20 AM CDT 15.5 0.00R Stopped
Mar 30, 2026, 11:55 AM CDT 11.5 0.00R Stopped
Mar 25, 2026, 2:05 PM CDT 21.25 2.92R Ran ≥1R
Mar 20, 2026, 6:50 AM CDT 18 3.00R Ran ≥1R
Mar 19, 2026, 5:15 AM CDT 11.25 0.00R Stopped
Mar 17, 2026, 5:20 AM CDT 7.25 3.00R Ran ≥1R
Mar 16, 2026, 9:40 AM CDT 10.5 0.00R Stopped
Mar 9, 2026, 6:45 PM CDT 4.75 0.00R Stopped
Feb 6, 2026, 3:15 PM CST 10.75 0.00R Stopped
Feb 3, 2026, 8:20 AM CST 3.5 0.00R Stopped
Feb 2, 2026, 4:45 AM CST 13.75 3.00R Ran ≥1R
Jan 28, 2026, 3:25 AM CST 7.5 0.00R Stopped
Jan 26, 2026, 3:50 AM CST 16.75 3.00R Ran ≥1R
Jan 23, 2026, 2:05 AM CST 14.25 0.00R Stopped
Jan 18, 2026, 6:20 PM CST 35.25 0.09R Stopped
Jan 16, 2026, 8:45 AM CST 14.25 0.00R Stopped
Jan 7, 2026, 9:00 PM CST 9 0.94R Stopped
Dec 30, 2025, 9:15 AM CST 13 2.02R Ran ≥1R

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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