# Three black crows pattern

> Three black crows are three consecutive strong down bars, each closing near its low — persistent, orderly selling with no panic in it, read as a campaign of distribution rather than a single bad day.

Canonical: https://patternsradar.com/learn/three-black-crows

Three substantial red candles in succession, each finishing near its low, make the pattern. What distinguishes it from a crash is its composure: there is no capitulation spike, no washout wick, no single outsized bar — just a seller returning every session with more to do and pressing to each close. One big down day is an event that may exhaust itself; three consecutive controlled ones are a campaign, and campaigns imply the seller was not finished when the third bar ended.

The pattern's reputation rests on what it is not — there is no panic in it to fade, which removes the mean-reversion buyer's usual comfort. Because the third bar completes it, the finished pattern is often a session old when a scan runs, and the site's three-black-crows preset accounts for that: pattern is three_black_crows within 2 bars, so a print completed yesterday still surfaces. For holders, it is less a shorting prompt than the tape's clearest early notice that distribution is underway.

Its failure mode mirrors the soldiers': three hard down days leave a stock short-term oversold, and the sessions immediately after often bounce — acting on the third crow's close is frequently selling the local low. The pattern describes the seller's persistence; it does not time the exit. The hit-rate replay on the scan page replays past prints against what followed, which is the fair test of whether the crows kept flying or the bounce came first.

## In Sift

Written as `pattern is three_black_crows — or within 2 bars for recent prints`. A working scan — stocks completing three black crows in the last two sessions:

```sift
where pattern is three_black_crows within 2 bars
```

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

## Scans that use it

- [Three black crows](https://patternsradar.com/screener/three-black-crows.md): Three consecutive long down-days, each closing near its low — persistent, orderly selling.

## Common questions

### What do three black crows mean?

Persistent, controlled selling. Three consecutive strong down bars, each closing near its low, record a seller who came back every session and pressed to the close — a campaign rather than a shock. The absence of panic is the point: there is no capitulation spike to fade, which suggests the selling was deliberate and possibly unfinished.

### How reliable are three black crows?

As a description of what just happened, entirely; as a forecast, mixed. Three hard down days leave a stock short-term oversold, so an immediate bounce is common even when the larger decline continues — reacting on the third close often sells the local low. The replay on the scan page shows how past prints actually resolved over the following sessions.