Pattern Detail

Bullish Harami

Two-candle reversal: a small up candle held entirely inside the body of a large prior down candle.

A real Bullish Harami on NQ daily bars, Apr 27, 2022. Price then followed through 2.5% over the next 5 bars. The bright candles are the pattern; the dimmed bars are surrounding context.
A real Bullish Harami on NQ daily bars, Apr 27, 2022. Price then followed through 2.5% 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)

47.9%

Reliable

Offered at least 1× its risk before the stop, vs 41.8% for a random long entry (+6.0 pts).

Move size vs normal

1.10×

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

Typical room (20-bar)

1.23R

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

Summary

Offered at least 1R of room 47.9% of the time vs 41.8% for a random long entry — a 6.0-point gap, wider than the ±0.7-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 long entry

Outcome This setup Random entry Edge
Offered ≥ 1R 47.9% 41.8% +6.0
Offered ≥ 2R 31.9% 28.1% +3.7
Offered ≥ 3R 22.1% 19.9% +2.2
Stopped < 1R 51.5% 56.3% -4.8
Went sideways 0.7% 1.8% -1.2

20,961 occurrences · 1,150,038 random-entry controls · 20-bar horizon

A bullish harami is a two-candle pause and turn. A large down candle is followed by a small up candle whose body sits entirely inside the body of the one before it. Harami means pregnant: the small candle is nestled within the large one. The hard selling suddenly stops, which is the first hint of a turn.

The harami is one of the classical reversal patterns Steve Nison describes in Japanese Candlestick Charting Techniques (1991), the inverse of the engulfing.

How to spot it

  • The market is falling into the pattern.
  • The first candle is a large down (red) candle that fits the decline.
  • The second candle is small and its body sits inside the first candle’s body: a higher low and a lower high than the prior open and close.
  • The smaller the second candle relative to the first, the more textbook the signal.

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 large down candle is the sellers still doing what they have been doing all the way into the pattern: pressing price lower with size. As it closes, they are firmly in control and nothing looks amiss.

Then the second candle refuses to extend the move. It opens inside the prior body, trades in a tight range, and closes higher than it opened, all without breaking above or below the big candle’s body. The selling that drove every bar before it has simply gone quiet. Buyers have not seized control yet, but the relentless pressure that defined the decline is no longer there, and that stall is what catches a trader’s eye. The smaller the inside candle, the more complete the loss of momentum looks.

Whether that quiet turns into a real turn 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 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 Firings (20)

Based on data through Apr 29, 2026

Time Risk (pts) Room offered Result
Apr 29, 2026, 2:45 PM CDT 9.5 Open
Apr 29, 2026, 8:35 AM CDT 59.25 2.23R Ran ≥1R
Apr 29, 2026, 1:30 AM CDT 3.75 0.00R Stopped
Apr 28, 2026, 11:55 PM CDT 3.75 0.00R Stopped
Apr 28, 2026, 9:25 AM CDT 19.75 0.00R Stopped
Apr 28, 2026, 1:50 AM CDT 12.5 0.50R Stopped
Apr 27, 2026, 9:50 PM CDT 5.75 0.00R Stopped
Apr 27, 2026, 9:40 PM CDT 5 0.00R Stopped
Apr 27, 2026, 8:10 PM CDT 11.5 2.00R Ran ≥1R
Apr 27, 2026, 1:55 PM CDT 8.25 1.00R Ran ≥1R
Apr 27, 2026, 10:05 AM CDT 24.25 0.34R Stopped
Apr 27, 2026, 8:35 AM CDT 38.75 0.23R Stopped
Apr 27, 2026, 7:10 AM CDT 8 0.00R Stopped
Apr 27, 2026, 12:40 AM CDT 14.5 0.48R Stopped
Apr 27, 2026, 12:20 AM CDT 11.75 0.00R Stopped
Apr 26, 2026, 6:40 PM CDT 8.75 3.00R Ran ≥1R
Apr 24, 2026, 2:40 PM CDT 13 2.23R Ran ≥1R
Apr 23, 2026, 2:00 PM CDT 19.5 3.00R Ran ≥1R
Apr 23, 2026, 7:50 AM CDT 48.75 1.99R Ran ≥1R
Apr 23, 2026, 6:35 AM CDT 25.25 3.00R Ran ≥1R

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