Inside bar pattern
An inside bar is a session whose entire high-to-low range fits within the previous bar's range. It is a one-day volatility contraction, the market pausing inside yesterday's boundaries before it picks a direction.
The measurement is containment 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, where 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 and records only that the range contracted.
Direction comes from the trend the pause sits in. An inside bar in a directionless chart is a quiet day. Inside an established uptrend it usually reads as a rest, 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 inside-bar-squeeze scan takes that reading: pattern is inside_bar with the close above the 50-day average and the 50-day above the 200-day, a pause inside a trend in good order.
Inside bars are common. Quiet sessions follow loud ones constantly, and most resolve into nothing more than a second quiet session.
The setup's honesty is that it predicts expansion and says nothing about direction, so the break can go either way and inside-bar traders bracket both sides of the mother bar. Folklore says the break favours the trend. The replay on the scan page tests the trend-filtered version against 250 close-to-close sessions, costs excluded, and says whether it does.
In Sift
Written as pattern is inside_bar. A working scan — inside bars printing while the trend holds:
where pattern is inside_bar and close > sma(50)1
of the 500 most-traded NSE stocks match today, as of 25 Sept 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 an inside bar bullish or bearish?
Neither. It is a contraction. 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, and inside an established uptrend the pause resolves upward more often, 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, because 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 and an inside bar is a volatility claim about contraction, and one bar can qualify as both.