Bearish harami pattern
A bearish harami is a two-candle pattern in which a small down bar sits entirely inside the previous large up bar's body. After strong buying, the advance failed to continue at the first opportunity.
A large green bar, then a small red one contained completely within its body. The second session opens below the prior close and never escapes the previous bar's range, so the buyers who dominated yesterday produced nothing today. No level broke and nobody was overwhelmed. The advance stalled at its first chance to extend, and that restraint is the whole pattern, a trend's first missed step recorded before any actual reversal has happened.
Hesitation halfway up a chart is unremarkable, because trends rest constantly. Hesitation at stretched prices is a different observation, since an extended advance depends on continuous demand and a session without any is the supply of buyers thinning in public. The bearish-harami preset makes that distinction with RSI(14) above 55, so the stall registers only on charts high enough for a stall to threaten something. This is one of the weaker reversal patterns and it is honest to say so: most bearish harami prints inside healthy uptrends resolve as one quiet day before the trend resumes. Its practical use is as an early flag on extended names already held, prompting attention.
In Sift
Written as pattern is bearish_harami. A working scan — bearish harami candles on stretched charts:
where pattern is bearish_harami and rsi(14) > 601
of the 500 most-traded NSE stocks match today, as of 6 Oct 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 harami reliable?
It is among the weaker reversal patterns, and honestly so. A small red bar inside a big green one records hesitation and no selling pressure at all, and healthy uptrends hesitate all the time. It becomes worth flagging at stretched prices, where a missed step threatens an advance that depends on continuous demand, and the scan page's replay puts a number on that difference across 250 close-to-close sessions.
What is the difference between a bearish harami and a bearish engulfing?
Direction of dominance. In a bearish engulfing the red bar swallows the prior green one, so sellers actively overwhelm a full session of buying. In a bearish harami the red bar hides inside the green one and the advance merely fails to continue. The engulfing records a takeover and the harami records a stall, which is the weaker claim.