What is a Shooting Star Candlestick Pattern?
A shooting star is a single-candle reversal pattern with a small body near the low of the range, a long upper wick, and barely any lower wick. It prints after a move up — and tells you buyers just tried to push higher and got rejected.
Think of it as a failed breakout compressed into one candle. Price went up. Sellers showed up. Price came back down near the open.
What Does a Shooting Star Candlestick Pattern Indicate?
A shooting star tells you higher prices got rejected. Buyers pushed price up during the session. Sellers absorbed the demand and dragged the close back down toward the open.
The long upper wick = the failed push. The weak close = buyers losing control at the highs. That's exhaustion, and it usually shows up at resistance, prior highs, or round-number levels.
Is the Shooting Star Candlestick Pattern Bullish or Bearish?
Bearish.
It's a strong sell response after price trades higher, often marking buyer exhaustion near the top of a move. Context matters more than the candle itself. A shooting star in the middle of a range is noise. A shooting star into a key level after a multi-day rally carries weight.
How to Identify a Shooting Star Candlestick Pattern?
Look for a "failed push" shape at the highs after price is already extended up. Without that context, the candle carries no signal.
- Location: prints after an uptrend or strong upswing into a prior high or resistance area
- Body: small real body near the low of the candle's range
- Upper wick: at least 2x the real body — the longer, the stronger
- Lower wick: little to none
- Color: secondary, but a red close reads more bearish than a green one
⚠️ Warning: A long upper wick alone doesn't make a shooting star. Location is half the signal. Without an extended move into resistance, the candle means little.
How to Trade a Shooting Star Candlestick Pattern?
The clean trade is a short after confirmation — using the shooting star's high as your invalidation and the next support as your first target. Don't short the candle itself. Wait for the next candle to confirm the rejection.
- Entry: short after a bearish confirmation candle closes below the shooting star's low — or at minimum below its real body
- Stop loss: above the shooting star's high. If price breaks the wick, the rejection failed and you're done
- Profit target: next support zone, prior swing low, or a moving-average reclaim area where buyers previously defended
- Filter: only take setups that print directly into resistance, a prior swing high, or a round-number level. Skip mid-range signals
🔥 Pro Tip: The most expensive mistake with this pattern is shorting the shooting star itself before any confirmation. The wick proves nothing on its own — the next candle has to follow through. If it doesn't, the trade isn't there.
What Happens After a Shooting Star Candlestick Pattern?
Two outcomes follow. Either price follows through lower as trapped buyers bail and sellers press the reversal — or it chops, holds the level, and breaks higher because the wick was just a liquidity probe.
- Common follow-through: a lower close on the next 1–3 candles, then a pullback that retests the shooting star area from below
- Continuation failure: price holds above the shooting star's midpoint, grinds back to the high, and breaks the wick to resume the uptrend
- Range behavior: in sideways markets, long upper wicks are routine. The signal gets noisy fast — expect whipsaw
📌 Key Takeaway: The shooting star marks the setup; the follow-through determines whether to enter. Tag both in your journal — over time, you'll see which locations produce the cleanest reversals and which ones chop you up.
What are the Different Types of Shooting Star Candlestick Patterns?
The variants come down to how strong the close is and how extreme the upper wick is relative to the body:
- Classic shooting star: small body near the low, long upper wick, minimal lower wick
- Red (bearish-close) shooting star: closes below the open — sellers won the session more decisively. This is the strongest version
- Green (bullish-close) shooting star: closes above the open but still near the low of the range. Treat it as a warning until price confirms lower
- Gravestone doji variant: open and close nearly equal (doji-like body) with a long upper wick — the cleanest rejection at the highs you'll see