Morning Star
Bullish reversal3 sessions
Selling, then hesitation, then buying. The three-session version of a bottom, and the most demanding of the bullish patterns.
The shape: A real down body, a small body gapping away from it, then an up body closing back into the first
What it is
Session one is a decisive down bar. Session two is small and detached — the selling has stopped without buying having started. Session three is an up bar that closes well back into the first body, taking back at least half of it.
The middle bar is the pattern. It is the day the trend stopped working, and its size is the measure: the smaller it is relative to the first bar, the more complete the pause.
Because it takes three sessions, it is rarer than a hammer or an engulfing and correspondingly harder to dismiss as noise.
How to read it
Measure the third bar against the first. Closing above the midpoint is the minimum; closing above the first bar's open is a stronger reading.
The middle bar's low is the level the pattern is built on. Below it, the sequence is void.
A morning star at a support zone the chart already found is the highest-agreement version of this: three sessions of behaviour, at a price with history.
On the chart: a triangle below the bar for a bullish reading, above it for a bearish one, a diamond for indecision. Hover any mark to see the pattern and what qualified it — the level it formed at and the move it followed.
Using it on the wheel
A three-session pattern arrives late by construction — the low is two sessions old by the time it completes. For a premium seller that is often the point: the level has been tested and defended for three sessions, which is more evidence than a single wick.
Implied volatility has usually begun to settle by the third bar, so the premium available is typically lower than it was at the low. That trade-off — better evidence, less premium — is the honest description of what a completed reversal pattern offers.
Like everything in this guide, these are descriptions of conditions and reference levels — context for your own decisions, not instructions to trade.