Evening star pattern
An evening star is a three-candle top: a strong up bar, a small-bodied pause, then a strong down bar closing through the midpoint of the first — enthusiasm, doubt, and exit, told across three sessions.
The sequence runs: a substantial up day, buyers in charge; then a small-bodied bar where the advance stalls and conviction goes quiet; then a strong down day that cuts back through the midpoint of the first bar's body, surrendering more than half of its gains. Three sessions that read as enthusiasm, doubt, and exit — in that order. The third bar is the pattern's spine: without the decisive close into the first candle's gains, the stall was only a rest.
The confirming bar lands last, so a completed evening star is frequently a session old by the time anyone scans for it — the site's evening-star preset searches pattern is evening_star within 2 bars for exactly that reason. Of the star pair this is the one most useful to people already holding positions: it prints at the top of an advance by construction, and its message — the buyers who drove bar one did not show up for bar three — is a message about names you own.
The base-rate caution applies here as everywhere: strong uptrends stage three-bar stumbles and then carry on, and an evening star absorbed within a few sessions is a common sight. The pattern nominates a possible top; the following bars either honour it or retire it, and a close back above the star cancels the story. The hit-rate replay on the scan page replays past prints against what actually followed, which is the honest test of the pattern's reputation.
In Sift
Written as pattern is evening_star — or within 2 bars for recent prints. A working scan — stocks completing an evening star in the last two sessions:
where pattern is evening_star within 2 bars1
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 the evening star a sell signal?
It is a top-of-advance warning rather than an instruction. The three bars record buyers driving, stalling, and being decisively answered — a coherent story of demand exhausting. But strong trends absorb such stumbles routinely, so traders typically treat a fresh evening star as a reason to watch the next sessions and manage risk, not an automatic exit.
How is an evening star different from a shooting star?
Scale. A shooting star is one candle — a single session's rejected push higher, read from its long upper wick. An evening star is three candles — an up bar, a pause, and a down bar closing through the first bar's midpoint — recording a completed shift from buyers to sellers. The three-bar version makes the larger, and generally stronger, claim.