Three White Soldiers

The Pattern

Three White Soldiers forms over three consecutive bars:

1. Three white (close-above-open) bodies in a row.
2. Each bar opens inside the prior bar’s body (not gapping above).
3. Each bar closes near its own high, with short upper wicks.

The pattern must print after a downtrend. The three bars together cover a substantial price range upward, with the closes stair-stepping higher.

The Story Behind It

Where single-bar and two-bar reversals can be dismissed as noise, Three White Soldiers is harder to ignore: three consecutive sessions of disciplined accumulation, each session’s buyers building on the previous, none gapping away from the action. Classical analysts read it as a regime change visible in the tape itself rather than inferred from a single dramatic bar.

The pattern has a degenerate cousin called Advance Block, where the bars are still all white but each one is progressively smaller, indicating buying that is losing steam. The strict Three White Soldiers definition filters those out by requiring full-body closing-near-high bars.

When It Tends To Work

• After a sustained downtrend, where three consecutive up-bars represent a meaningful break from the prior pattern.
• In markets with momentum-driven follow-through. The pattern itself is a momentum signal, so it tends to extend in instruments and timeframes that respect momentum.
• When the third bar still closes near its high. Late-day weakness on the third bar weakens the signal.

When It Tends To Fail

• When the third bar exhibits weakness (upper wick, close in the middle of the range). The strict pattern filter catches some of these, but milder weakness still slips through.
• After news-driven spikes that exhaust quickly. Three consecutive panic-buy bars after a sharp decline often reverse just as quickly.
• In low-frequency contracts. The pattern is strict enough that it may fire only a handful of times per year on a single instrument.

How This Strategy Trades It

Enter long at the close of the third bar. Hold for hold_bars sessions (default 5), then flatten unconditionally.

Related Patterns

• Three Black Crows: the directional mirror, three consecutive strong down-bars.
• Morning Star: a different three-bar bullish reversal, down-pause-up sequence instead of three consecutive up-bars.
• Bullish Engulfing: a two-bar version of the control-shift idea.

Try It Yourself

The default preset uses 1-contract sizing on NQ daily bars. The form lets you change the contract, timeframe, hold length, and contract count.