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.
Three substantial red candles in succession, each finishing near its low. What distinguishes the run from a crash is its composure. There is no capitulation spike and no washout wick, 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 absence of panic is most of the pattern's reputation, because it removes the mean-reversion buyer's usual comfort: there is nothing there to fade.
Because the third bar completes it, the finished pattern is often a session old when a scan runs, and the three-black-crows preset accounts for that by searching pattern is three_black_crows within 2 bars, so a print completed yesterday still surfaces. For holders it reads as the tape's clearest early notice that distribution is under way. Its failure mode mirrors the soldiers'. Three hard down days leave a stock short-term oversold and the sessions immediately after often bounce, so acting on the third crow's close is frequently selling the local low. The scan page replays past prints against what followed over 250 sessions, close to close, with no costs in it.
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:
where pattern is three_black_crows 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
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, which is a campaign rather than a shock. The missing capitulation spike is the point: there is nothing to fade, and the selling looks 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, and reacting on the third close often sells the local low. The replay on the scan page shows how past prints actually resolved over the sessions that followed.