What does an evening star candlestick look like?
The pattern needs a rise before it; in the middle of a range, three candles reverse nothing. Read them as a story, as in the drawing at the top of this page.
Hypothetical daily chart: candle 1 opens at $72.40 and closes at $76.00, so the midpoint of its body is $74.20. The star opens at $76.50, trades up to $77.40 and closes at $76.70. Candle 3 opens at $76.30 and closes at $73.60, below $74.20, and completes the pattern. The color of the star does not matter; its small body does.
- Candle 1, long green: buyers are still in control and the rise continues.
- Candle 2, the star: a small body above the first candle’s body. Neither side wins the period, and the buying stalls.
- Candle 3, long red: sellers push the close below the midpoint of candle 1’s body, taking back more than half of the buying.
Evening star vs morning star: what is the difference?
They are the same pattern turned upside down. The morning star forms after a decline: a long red candle, a small star lower down, then a long green candle closing above the midpoint of the red body. The evening star forms after a rise and ends with a red candle closing below the midpoint of the green body.
Everything else mirrors too. A morning star matters most at support, an evening star at resistance. The morning star’s stop goes under the star’s low, the evening star’s stop above the star’s high. And just as candles 2 and 3 of a morning star often form a bullish engulfing, candles 2 and 3 of an evening star often form a bearish engulfing pattern, while candles 1 and 2 can look like a bearish harami.
Does an evening star need a gap? Variants in stocks
Textbook definitions, which come from Japanese candlestick charting, want the star’s body to gap above the first body and the third candle to open back below the star, like the first panel below. In US stocks that version shows up mostly on daily charts, where the overnight break lets a stock open away from the prior close, often after news.
Intraday, each candle usually opens where the last one closed, so a strict gap rarely forms on a 5-minute chart. Most traders accept a star whose body simply sits at or above the first candle’s close, as in the middle panel. When the middle candle is a doji, the pattern is often called an evening doji star (third panel), and it reads the same way. When the star is a shooting star, with a long upper wick, the rejection of higher prices is easier to see.
Where does an evening star matter? Context and location
The same three candles mean a lot at one price and little at another. An evening star deserves attention when it ends a clear rise at a level other traders watch: a resistance zone, a prior swing high or a round number. In the middle of a range, or halfway up a strong rally with no level in sight, it is often only a pause.
Two more checks add weight. Volume on candle 3 above the stock’s average shows real selling, which relative volume measures. And the higher timeframe should not be in a strong uptrend: an evening star on a 15-minute chart against a rising daily trend is more likely a dip than a reversal, as explained in multi-timeframe analysis.
How to trade an evening star: confirmation, entry, stop and target
Most beginners do not short stocks, and for them the evening star is mainly a warning. If you hold the stock from lower down, it is a cue to protect the gain: sell part or all of the position on the confirmation close, or raise the stop to just under candle 1’s low, $72.20 in the example.
Traders who sell short use it as an entry. Shorting has its own risks: a stock can gap up overnight far beyond the stop, and a short squeeze can push price sharply higher, as the short selling guide explains. Continuing the hypothetical from the top of the page:
- Confirmation: the next candle closes at $72.80, below candle 3’s low of $73.40.
- Entry: sell short near $72.80 at that close.
- Stop: just above the star’s high of $77.40, at $77.70. That is $4.90 of risk per share; evening stars often need a wide stop.
- Target: the next support, say $63.00, $9.80 away, a 2:1 risk-reward ratio. If the nearest support sat at $70.00, the trade would offer too little.
- Size: risking $245 on the trade, $245 ÷ $4.90 = 50 shares. The position size calculator does this for you.
When does the evening star fail?
An evening star fails when price closes above the star’s high: the high that sellers defended has given way. In the right panel below, the pattern forms with no resistance above it, the next candle closes higher instead of confirming, and the one after closes above the star’s high and the stop. Whoever sold short at the close of candle 3 takes the planned loss, or more on a gap; whoever waited for confirmation never entered.
The usual reasons it fails:
- No level: a star in the middle of a rally is often just a pause before higher prices.
- A weak third candle: a close that barely reaches the midpoint, on low volume, shows little selling.
- Gaps: an overnight gap up can open above your stop, so the loss can exceed your plan.
- A strong uptrend on the higher timeframe: dips against it tend to be short.
Evening star terms in plain words
The words that come up when traders talk about this pattern, each in a sentence or two.
- Evening star
- A three-candle bearish reversal pattern after a rise: a long green candle, a small-bodied star higher up, then a long red candle closing below the midpoint of the first body.
- Star
- The small-bodied middle candle of the pattern. Its high is where the stop goes.
- Evening doji star
- An evening star whose middle candle is a doji.
- Body midpoint
- The price halfway between the open and close of a candle. The third candle of an evening star must close below the first candle’s midpoint.
- Confirmation
- A later close that supports the pattern, here a close below the low of the third candle.