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Shooting star

A candle after an advance with a small body near the low and a long upper shadow, showing a failed push higher.

Requirements are a preceding rally, an upper-shadow at least twice the candle-body, and minimal lower shadow. Price ran up, met supply, and closed back near where it opened.

Location does the work. A shooting star into a prior-day-high-low, a value-area-high or a round number is a coherent rejection story. The same candle in the middle of a range is a coin flip.

Trading it: enter on a break of the star's low, stop above its high, first target the recent swing-low. Expect the stop to be wide because the upper shadow defines it. Where that makes the risk-reward-ratio worse than roughly 1.5 to 1, the honest answer is to skip the trade rather than shrink the stop into the body.

Related: inverted-hammer, gravestone-doji, hanging-man, pin-bar, resistance

See it drawn

Original diagrams for the ideas on this page. Illustrative, not real market data.

The parts of a candlestickAn up candle and a down candle with the same high and low, labelled with open, high, low, close, the real body and the wicks.UP CANDLEclose above openHigh 41.00Close 40.30Open 38.20Low 37.40upper wickreal bodyopen to closelower wickDOWN CANDLEclose below openHigh 41.00Open 40.30Close 38.20Low 37.40Same high and low; only the open and close swap places.
The parts of a candlestick. One candle sums up a slice of time: the thick real body runs from the opening price to the closing price, and the thin wicks reach out to the highest and lowest prices traded. Colour tells you which way the body ran.

Educational only, not advice. Spotted an error? Post in Site Feedback.