Two- and Three-Candle Patterns: Engulfing, Stars, Soldiers

Patterns read across several candles

Two- and three-candle patterns are named by how the bodies of consecutive candles relate to each other. The questions are whether a later candle's body covers the earlier one's, whether the middle candle is small, and how far the last close has recovered. Because the conditions span several candles, these patterns are sometimes presented as more reliable than single-candle ones. The definitions in this article are exactly the criteria used for the measurements below, and 'after a decline' means that the close of the candle just before the pattern's first candle was lower than the close five candles before that. Single-candle patterns were covered in the article on single candlestick patterns. The reason for grouping candles is to see a change of direction as a sequence of steps. A candle moving one way, a hesitant candle, and then a candle moving strongly the other way are read as the upper hand passing from one side to the other. The more conditions there are, however, the rarer the pattern and the smaller the sample, and if just one candle falls slightly short of a rule, it gets a different name or drops out altogether. That is why different tools easily find different patterns on the same chart.

Bullish engulfing and bearish engulfing

A bullish engulfing pattern is a bearish candle after a decline, followed by a bullish candle whose body completely covers the bearish candle's body. For the measurements, we counted cases where the bullish candle opened at or below the previous close, closed at or above the previous open, and had a longer body than the previous candle. A bearish engulfing pattern is a bullish candle after a rise whose body is covered by the body of the next, bearish candle. In crypto markets the next candle almost always opens at the previous close, so in practice most of the condition comes down to whether the close moved beyond the previous candle's open. Perhaps for that reason, on the daily bars of 10 coins, bullish engulfing (1,218) and bearish engulfing (1,225) were, after the doji, the most frequent candlestick patterns counted in this course. The case for reading an engulfing pattern as a reversal is that during the second candle, buyers undid the whole move sellers made in the first candle and went further. Things checked alongside it are how large the second body is, whether its wicks are short, and whether its volume is heavier than the first candle's. A common mistake is to give the same weight to cases where the first candle is tiny. A small, almost doji-like candle is easy to cover, so the size of the first body matters too.

Harami: engulfing turned inside out

The harami is the reverse of the engulfing pattern: after a candle with a long body comes a small body that sits inside the previous body. After a decline, following a long bearish candle, it is called a bullish harami; after a rise, following a long bullish candle, a bearish harami. It means that after a big move in one direction, the movement shrank on the next candle. The right side of the figure above is a bullish harami. The harami was not included in this course's measurements, so we will not say anything about how it performed. If the engulfing pattern says 'the other side took over', the harami is closer to 'one side's push has paused for now'. So rather than reading a direction change from the harami alone, many people check which way the next candle breaks out of the first candle's range. When the second candle is a doji, it is sometimes given a separate name, the harami cross. Books differ on whether the second candle only needs to sit inside the first body or inside the full range including the wicks.

Morning star and evening star

A morning star is made up of three candles: after a decline, a long bearish candle whose body is at least 60% of its range, then a small candle whose body is at most 30% of the first candle's body, and finally a bullish candle that closes above the midpoint of the first candle's body. The name likens the small middle candle to a star in the dawn sky. An evening star is the reverse: after a rise, a long bullish candle, a small candle, and then a bearish candle that closes below the midpoint of the first candle's body. Told as the behavior of participants, the three candles say that sellers were in control in the first candle, could not press further and hesitated in the second, and that buyers recovered more than half of the first candle's drop in the third. That is why whether the third candle closes above the midpoint of the first body is the key condition. A common mistake is to think a small middle candle is enough; if the third candle does not reach the midpoint of the first body, it is not a morning star under this definition.

Textbook gaps and a 24-hour market

In the traditional definition of the morning star, the middle candle's body must not overlap the first candle's body; it has to sit below it, leaving a space (a gap) between the two bodies. Gaps mostly appear when a market closes and then reopens at a different price, but in crypto, which trades without a break, the next candle almost always starts at the previous candle's close. So this course's measurements and this site's Candlestick Pattern Scanner look only at the shape, without the gap condition. The name is the same, but what is being counted is slightly different from the textbook pattern. The difference affects interpretation as well. A textbook gap is a trace of many people changing their minds while the market was closed, and a morning star in a 24-hour market carries no such information. On daily stock charts, by contrast, the gap condition can be used as written, but it is also worth checking whether the gap was caused by something else, such as overnight news. Bringing over results from another market without checking which definition was counted means comparing different things.

Three white soldiers and three black crows

Three white soldiers are three bullish candles in a row with long bodies. For the measurements, we counted cases where all three bodies were at least 50% of their ranges, the closes rose one after another, and the second and third candles opened inside the previous candle's body. Three black crows are three bearish candles with long bodies whose closes fall one after another. Both patterns were counted without any condition on the preceding move. The 'white' and 'black' in the names come from candle colors, but colors differ from chart to chart (on this page, rising candles are green and falling candles red), so it is simplest to remember them as three rising candles and three falling candles. Three white soldiers describe buyers persisting in one direction more than a reversal as such, so after a decline they are read as a reversal and during a rise as a continuation. The candle to watch is the third. When the bodies shrink or the upper wicks lengthen, the shape is sometimes given a separate name as a sign of fading strength. And if the three candles come after a large rise already, it also means a lot of movement in a short time.

Measured on daily bars of 10 coins

Using the same data as the single candlestick patterns article (29,946 daily bars of 10 coins on Binance, from each coin's listing date to September 22, 2026), we compared the close of each pattern's last candle with the close 5 bars later. The three patterns presented as bullish signals (bullish engulfing, morning star, three white soldiers) all had up rates slightly below the baseline, and two of the three presented as bearish signals (evening star, three black crows) came in above it. That is the opposite of the textbook direction, but most of the differences are a few percentage points. The 65.8% up rate one bar after three black crows (baseline 50.6%) stands out, but it rests on only 76 samples. For three black crows, the number that stood out 1 bar later shrank to 55.3% 5 bars later. That is why it pays to look at several horizons rather than one. This comparison also measured every pattern on the same data with the same rules, so it cannot be set directly against numbers from tools or books that use different definitions.

• Baseline (all bars): up 50.5% after 5 bars
• 1,216 bullish engulfing: 47.9% · 1,224 bearish engulfing: 49.4%
• 135 morning stars: 46.7% · 141 evening stars: 51.8%
• 107 three white soldiers: 48.6% · 76 three black crows: 55.3%

BTC alone: the small-sample trap

On BTC daily bars alone, the numbers change sharply. Three white soldiers were followed by a higher close 5 bars later 9 times out of 12 (75.0%), while morning stars were followed by a higher close only 4 times out of 14 (28.6%), against a BTC daily baseline of 53.1%. Across all 10 coins, the same patterns came in at 48.6% and 46.7%, and on BTC 4-hour bars the 6-bar up rate was 59.5% after 74 three white soldiers and 49.3% after 73 morning stars (baseline 52.0%). With only a dozen or so samples, chance alone can produce a skew this large. The probability of getting 9 or more heads in 12 coin tosses works out to about 7%, so if you look at many patterns at once, a few are likely to look like this. With a small sample, adding or removing just a few cases changes the rate a lot. If only one result out of 12 changes, the rate moves by more than 8 percentage points. So rather than trusting one combination, it is safer to look at whether the direction is consistent across several coins and bar lengths.

A common misreading, and how not to jump to conclusions

Summing these numbers up as 'bullish patterns are actually followed by declines' is also jumping to a conclusion. Most of the differences are a few percentage points, and changing the coin or the bar length reversed the direction. When you hear a claim about a pattern, working through the checks below in order can keep you from drawing conclusions too early. The numbers in this article are also just a measurement of one past period; what to look for when testing a strategy on historical bars continues in the article on reading backtest results. Another common misreading is to count only whether price rose after the pattern, without looking at how far it rose or how far it fell along the way. Two cases with the same up rate can have very different move sizes. The items below apply equally to pattern claims you meet anywhere, not just in this article. Not jumping to conclusions takes the habit of asking about the conditions behind a number before the number itself.

• How large is the sample? With a few dozen or fewer, results swing widely
• Was it compared with the all-bars baseline rather than with 0 or 50%?
• Did you look at the median and the up rate before the average?
• Does the direction hold on other coins and other bar lengths?
• Was the definition fixed before the results were seen?

How it looks different in crypto and stocks

In two- and three-candle patterns, the market difference shows most clearly in the open. Stocks close and reopen, so the second candle often starts below or above the previous close, and conditions such as the engulfing pattern's 'open at or below the previous close' or the morning star's gap actually mean something. In crypto the open is almost always the previous close, so the same conditions are met automatically. Korean stocks have a daily price limit (±30%), so a candle that opens at the upper limit and stays there has the same high and low, and its body ratio cannot be calculated. When such candles come in a row, definitions like three white soldiers can match or fail for odd reasons, so they need to be filtered out. Across weekends and holidays, three consecutive candles can actually span five days. US indexes and large tech stocks move in extended-hours trading, and the regular-session candle shows the result only as a gap at the open. Stock volume also crowds into the open and the close, so candles do not carry even weight. The numbers in this article were measured on crypto daily bars and cannot be carried straight over to stocks such as Samsung Electronics or SK hynix.

Common mistakes on live charts

A two- or three-candle pattern is complete only when its last candle closes. On a live chart, the morning star conditions can switch on and off while the third candle is in progress, and for an engulfing pattern, whether the second close has passed the previous open can change right before the close. Judging by marks that switch on and off with every update ends up drawing conclusions from a candle that has not closed. On short candles such as 1-minute ones, this flickering happens countless times a day, and in quiet hours a handful of orders can make the conditions match and then fail. It helps to check first whether a pattern scanner or alert includes the candle in progress, and to make a habit of looking again at how the marked candle actually closed. Below are mistakes that often come up when watching live. All of them come from laying unconfirmed information, or numbers from other conditions, straight onto the chart in front of you.

• Confirming a pattern from a candle still in progress
• Giving an engulfing pattern that covers a tiny first candle the same weight as a large one
• Expecting numbers measured on daily bars from patterns on short candles such as 1-minute ones
• Assuming the same pattern appeared on another exchange's or another market's chart
• Not checking the next candle after the pattern completes