Bearish engulfing pattern
A bearish engulfing is a two-candle pattern in which a down bar's body completely swallows the previous up bar's body — one session of selling that erases and overruns the whole of the prior session's buying.
Two bars make the pattern: an up day, then a down day whose body opens above the previous close and closes below the previous open — the red body wraps the green one whole. Every buyer of the first session holds a loss by the end of the second. An ordinary red candle gives back some ground; this one gives back all of it and keeps going, which is why it reads as sellers taking control rather than buyers pausing.
In the middle of a range it is noise — engulfing shapes print somewhere every session. The bar earns attention where the advance it reverses was testing something, and the site's bearish-engulfing-near-the-highs scan places it at the sharpest such location: pattern is bearish_engulfing with close within 3% of the 52-week high. A visible failure while the stock probes its yearly high happens in front of the largest possible audience, and stretched momentum readings tell the same story from another angle.
The honest record: even at the highs, plenty of bearish engulfing bars are absorbed within days — strong stocks shrug off single rejections, and an uptrend has more ways to survive one bad session than to die of it. It is better used as a warning on names already held than as a standalone short signal. The hit-rate replay on the scan page shows how the filtered version has actually resolved, which beats the pattern's reputation as evidence.
In Sift
Written as pattern is bearish_engulfing. A working scan — bearish engulfing candles printing on extended charts:
where pattern is bearish_engulfing and rsi(14) > 601
of the 500 most-traded NSE stocks match today, as of 20 Aug 2026
Scans that use it
Prebuilt scans in the library whose query reads this pattern — each with a hit-rate replay over the last 250 sessions.
Common questions
Is a bearish engulfing pattern a sell signal?
It is a warning, not a verdict. The pattern records sellers overwhelming one full session of buying, which matters most when the stock is extended or testing a level such as its 52-week high. Uptrends absorb single rejections routinely, so most traders treat it as a reason to tighten risk on names they hold rather than an automatic exit.
Where does a bearish engulfing pattern matter most?
At the top of something. A red bar that swallows a green one in mid-range is unremarkable; the same shape while a stock tests its yearly high is a public failure at a level many participants are watching. That is why the site's preset pairs the pattern with distance from the 52-week high rather than scanning for the shape alone.