# Inside bar pattern

> An inside bar is a session whose entire high-to-low range fits within the previous bar's range — a one-day volatility contraction, read as the market pausing inside yesterday's boundaries before choosing a direction.

Canonical: https://patternsradar.com/learn/inside-bar

The geometry is containment, measured on the full range rather than the body: today's high is below yesterday's high and today's low is above yesterday's low. Nothing the previous session established was challenged in either direction. That makes the inside bar a one-session volatility squeeze — the argument that produced yesterday's range has gone quiet, and the market is coiling inside boundaries both sides already accepted. It takes no view on direction; it records that the range contracted.

Direction comes from the trend the pause sits in. An inside bar in a directionless chart is just a quiet day, but inside an established uptrend it usually reads as a rest rather than a top — and it hands the trader an unusually well-defined pair of levels, since the mother bar's high and low frame the coil exactly. The site's inside-bar-squeeze scan takes that reading: pattern is inside_bar with close above sma(50) above sma(200), a pause inside a trend in good order.

Inside bars are common — quiet sessions follow loud ones constantly — and most resolve as nothing more than a second quiet session. The setup's honesty is that it predicts expansion, not direction: the break can go either way, which is why inside-bar traders bracket both sides of the mother bar rather than assume. The hit-rate replay on the scan page tests the trend-filtered version, where the folklore says the break favours the trend — the replay says whether it does.

## In Sift

Written as `pattern is inside_bar`. A working scan — inside bars printing while the trend holds:

```sift
where pattern is inside_bar and close > sma(50)
```

1 of the 500 most-traded NSE stocks match today, as of 2026-08-21.

## Scans that use it

- [Inside bar in an uptrend](https://patternsradar.com/screener/inside-bar-squeeze.md): A contracted range inside yesterday's, while the larger trend still points up.

## Common questions

### Is an inside bar bullish or bearish?

Neither — it is a contraction, not a direction. The session stayed entirely inside the previous bar's range, which says volatility compressed and says nothing about which way it expands. The surrounding trend supplies the lean: inside an established uptrend the pause usually resolves upward more often than not, which is the reading the trend-filtered scan tests.

### How do traders use an inside bar?

The mother bar's high and low frame the coil exactly, so the common approach brackets both: an entry above the previous bar's high for an upward break, below its low for a downward one, with the opposite level as the invalidation. The appeal is the tight, pre-defined risk — the levels exist before the move does.

### What is the difference between an inside bar and a harami?

What gets measured. The harami compares bodies — a small body inside the previous body, with the colours mattering. The inside bar compares full ranges: today's high and low both inside yesterday's, colour irrelevant. A harami is a reversal claim about hesitation; an inside bar is a volatility claim about contraction. A bar can qualify as both.