Concept
Shooting Star
Shooting Star is a Chart & Candlestick Patterns concept. The Library holds 3 implementations, each one a working definition you can pull into Quant.
Top Shooting Star indicators
3 total
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What is a Shooting Star?
A shooting star is a single-candle bearish reversal signal from the candlestick catalog: after an advance, a candle prints with a small real body near the session's low, a long upper shadow (commonly at least twice the body's height), and little or no lower shadow. The shape records a failed auction higher: buyers extended the rally intrabar, sellers sold the excursion back down, and the close finished near where the candle opened or lower.
Location is the whole definition. The identical candle appearing after a decline is an inverted hammer, a potential bullish signal, so anatomy alone decides nothing. A shooting star that spikes above a prior swing high before closing back below it carries an extra read: the wick swept resting stops and found no acceptance, kin to a swing failure pattern.
How traders use it
- As a top-reversal trigger at a location: a shooting star into a tested resistance level, supply zone, or measured objective is the standard setting; entries commonly trigger on a break of the star's low with the stop above the wick's high.
- As an exhaustion tell within confluence: paired with overbought oscillator readings, an upper volatility-band tag, or fading momentum, the long rejection wick argues the advance is being sold into rather than bought.
- As a stop-run marker: when the wick pokes above equal highs or a prior swing and closes back inside, the candle doubles as evidence of a liquidity grab, which makes it useful to structure-based traders outside candlestick systems too.
Shooting Star vs. look-alike candles
Inverted Hammer: Anatomically identical; only context differs. After an advance the candle is a bearish shooting star; after a decline it is a potentially bullish inverted hammer that most conventions ask the next candle to confirm.
Pin Bar: The pin bar is the western, range-based cousin: a long tail rejecting one extreme, defined on bars rather than real bodies and used in both directions. A bearish pin at highs and a shooting star often tag the same candle.
Evening Star: The evening star is a three-candle top pattern with a small star as its middle act; the shooting star makes its rejection statement in a single candle.
Related concepts · Candlestick catalog
Concept family
Chart & Candlestick Patterns
84 concepts mapped · 46 in the Library
Shooting Star FAQ
What is the difference between a shooting star and an inverted hammer?
The candle is the same: small body at the bottom of the range, long upper shadow. The difference is where it appears. Printed after a rally, it is a shooting star and reads bearish; printed after a decline, it is an inverted hammer and reads as a tentative bullish signal that most conventions require the next candle to confirm.
Does the color of a shooting star's body matter?
Common readings accept either color, since the long upper shadow is the defining feature. A bearish close is often treated as marginally stronger because sellers finished the session in control, closing below the open as well as far below the wick's high. Either way the candle is a caution flag, not a guarantee that the advance is over.
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