Pattern Detail

Bullish Three White Soldiers

Three-candle bullish reversal: three rising up candles in a row, each opening inside the prior body and closing higher.

A real Bullish Three White Soldiers on NQ daily bars, Jul 29, 2022. Price then followed through 1.8% over the next 5 bars. The bright candles are the pattern; the dimmed bars are surrounding context.
A real Bullish Three White Soldiers on NQ daily bars, Jul 29, 2022. Price then followed through 1.8% 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 3 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)

41.6%

Not reliable

Offered at least 1× its risk before the stop, vs 42.8% for a random long entry (-1.1 pts).

Move size vs normal

1.10×

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

Typical room (20-bar)

1.06R

Average run in favor (capped at 3R), vs 1.10R for a random long entry.

Summary

Offered ≥1R 41.6% of the time vs 42.8% for a random long entry. The 1.1-point gap is no bigger than the ±2.0-point margin of error you would get by chance from 2,276 occurrences. Not a reliable edge.

Room offered, this setup vs a random long entry

Outcome This setup Random entry Edge
Offered ≥ 1R 41.6% 42.8% -1.1
Offered ≥ 2R 18.9% 27.3% -8.4
Offered ≥ 3R 9.1% 18.5% -9.4
Stopped < 1R 43.1% 53.6% -10.6
Went sideways 15.3% 3.6% +11.7

2,276 occurrences · 1,165,570 random-entry controls · 20-bar horizon

Three white soldiers is a three-candle reversal that shows steady buying after a fall. Three up candles appear back to back, each a real-sized bar rather than a tiny one. Every candle opens inside the body of the one before it and closes higher than the last. The march of higher closes shows buyers taking the lead day after day and the trend turning up.

Three white soldiers is one of the classical continuation-and-reversal patterns Steve Nison documents in Japanese Candlestick Charting Techniques (1991).

How to spot it

  • The market is falling into the pattern.
  • Three up (green) candles appear in a row, none of them small.
  • Each candle opens inside the body of the candle before it.
  • Each candle closes higher than the one before it.
  • The steadier and more even the three bodies, the stronger the signal.

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

After a fall, the first strong up candle says buyers have shown up with real size. The next candle opens back inside that body, which gives sellers a chance to fade the bounce, and they fail: it closes higher still. The third does the same. Three times in a row buyers absorb the dip at the open and finish the bar near the top.

That repetition is the whole story. One up candle can be a reflex. Three in a row, each building on the last with full-sized bodies, looks like steady accumulation rather than a one-off pop. Control has changed hands from the sellers who ran the decline to buyers who now set the close every bar. When the three bodies are even and unhurried, the takeover reads as orderly rather than a panic that might snap back.

A calm, stair-stepping advance is convincing to look at. The numbers below show whether that look is matched by the room the move tends to give.

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.

Sample Bullish Three White Soldiers Firings (20)

Based on data through Apr 29, 2026

Time Risk (pts) Room offered Result
Apr 24, 2026, 2:05 AM CDT 37 1.30R Ran ≥1R
Apr 24, 2026, 2:00 AM CDT 28.25 2.08R Ran ≥1R
Apr 23, 2026, 1:00 PM CDT 200 0.38R Flat
Apr 23, 2026, 6:50 AM CDT 81.25 0.46R Stopped
Apr 23, 2026, 4:20 AM CDT 45 1.00R Ran ≥1R
Apr 22, 2026, 12:15 AM CDT 54.25 0.45R Flat
Apr 21, 2026, 8:35 PM CDT 27.75 0.37R Flat
Apr 21, 2026, 5:00 PM CDT 40 0.39R Flat
Apr 21, 2026, 2:01 PM CDT 80.5 0.50R Stopped
Apr 16, 2026, 12:25 AM CDT 25.75 1.67R Ran ≥1R
Apr 15, 2026, 7:40 PM CDT 18 2.35R Ran ≥1R
Apr 14, 2026, 6:30 PM CDT 25 0.22R Stopped
Apr 14, 2026, 10:20 AM CDT 52.5 2.18R Ran ≥1R
Apr 13, 2026, 8:45 PM CDT 13 0.90R Flat
Apr 10, 2026, 9:20 AM CDT 72.75 0.72R Stopped
Apr 8, 2026, 7:20 PM CDT 23.75 0.27R Stopped
Apr 8, 2026, 7:15 PM CDT 22.75 0.52R Stopped
Apr 7, 2026, 10:55 AM CDT 56.25 3.00R Ran ≥1R
Apr 7, 2026, 2:40 AM CDT 28.75 3.00R Ran ≥1R
Apr 6, 2026, 10:45 AM CDT 54.75 0.71R Stopped

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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