Morning star pattern
A morning star is a three-candle reversal: a strong down bar, a small-bodied pause, then a strong up bar closing through the midpoint of the first — heavy selling, a stall, and buyers taking control, in that order.
Three bars tell it in sequence. First, a substantial down day — the sellers in full control. Second, a small-bodied bar, the star: the selling stops, and neither side does much. Third, a strong up day that drives back through the midpoint of the first bar's body, recovering more than half the ground the sellers took. The pattern is the whole arc — pressure, exhaustion, reversal — and the third bar is what completes it; without the recovery through the midpoint there is no star, only a pause.
Because the confirmation bar arrives last, the completed pattern is often already a day old when a scan runs, which is why the site's morning-star preset searches pattern is morning_star within 2 bars — a print from yesterday still surfaces. It is one of the few candlestick formations with a genuinely coherent story rather than a shape alone, and it carries the most weight where there was a real decline to reverse: the deeper the first bar's context, the more the recovery through its midpoint says.
Three-bar formations test better than single candles because they record a completed shift in control — but completed is not guaranteed, and morning stars printed inside ongoing downtrends are routinely overrun within a week. The pattern identifies a candidate turn; it does not underwrite one. The hit-rate replay on the scan page replays a year of morning-star prints and shows how often the third bar's promise was kept, which is the only version of reliability worth quoting.
In Sift
Written as pattern is morning_star — or within 2 bars for recent prints. A working scan — stocks completing a morning star in the last two sessions:
where pattern is morning_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
How reliable is the morning star pattern?
Among candlestick patterns it tests comparatively well, because three bars record a finished transfer of control rather than one session's hesitation. It is still far from certain — stars printed inside strong downtrends get overrun regularly. Rather than a folklore percentage, use the replay on the scan page: it reruns past prints and reports the actual hit rate.
Does the middle candle of a morning star have to be a doji?
No. The middle bar needs a small body — a session where the selling stalled — and a doji is simply the purest version of that. What defines the pattern is the sequence around it: a strong down bar before, and a strong up bar after that closes through the first bar's midpoint. The recovery bar is the part that cannot be compromised.
What is the difference between a morning star and an evening star?
They are the same three-act structure told in opposite directions. A morning star ends a decline: down bar, pause, strong recovery through the midpoint. An evening star ends an advance: up bar, pause, strong down bar through the midpoint. One marks sellers exhausting, the other buyers — each is scanned separately because each is its own search.