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, with the sellers in full control. Second a small-bodied bar, the star, where 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 third bar is what completes the pattern. Without the recovery through that midpoint there is no star at all, only a pause, and because the confirmation arrives last the completed shape is often already a day old when a scan runs. The morning-star preset searches pattern is morning_star within 2 bars for that reason, so a print from yesterday still surfaces.
It is one of the few candlestick formations with a coherent story behind the geometry rather than a shape alone, and it carries 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 across a week rather than one session's hesitation. Morning stars printed inside ongoing downtrends are still overrun within days on a regular basis, so the shape identifies a candidate turn and the sessions after it settle the question. The replay on the scan page reruns a year of morning-star prints, 250 sessions close to close with no costs or slippage and the universe as of today, and reports how often the third bar's promise was kept.
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 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
How reliable is the morning star pattern?
Comparatively well for a candlestick pattern, because three bars record a finished transfer of control rather than one session's hesitation. It is still far from certain, and stars printed inside strong downtrends get overrun regularly. Instead of a folklore percentage, the replay on the scan page reruns past prints and reports the hit rate over 250 sessions, close to close and before costs.
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?
The same three-act structure told in opposite directions. A morning star ends a decline with a down bar, a pause and a strong recovery through the midpoint. An evening star ends an advance with an up bar, a pause and a strong down bar through the midpoint. One marks sellers exhausting and the other buyers, and each is scanned separately because each is its own search.