Tri Star (Bullish & Bearish)

A Bullish Tri Star is three doji in a row at the end of a decline. A doji is a candle that opens and closes at about the same price, so it has almost no body (the thick part between open and close). In a Tri Star, the middle doji's body sits below the bodies of the other two.

That space between bodies is called a body gap: no part of the middle body overlaps the bodies beside it. The shadows (the thin lines above and below each body) may still overlap. Only the bodies have to gap.

The mirror, a Bearish Tri Star, forms after a rally, with the middle doji's body above the bodies of the other two. This guide teaches the bullish form first and the bearish one as its mirror.

Either, depending on where it forms. After a decline, with the middle doji lowest, it is a bullish reversal pattern. After a rally, with the middle doji highest, it is a bearish one.

Either way, the three doji alone do not decide the direction; the closes after them do. For the bullish form, a close above the pattern's high confirms the turn, and a close below its low says the decline is going on. Both forms are rare: you may scan many charts before finding a clean one.

A single doji after a decline means one session ended in a draw: buyers and sellers both traded, and neither moved the close. The next candle usually decides what it meant. A Tri Star is three draws in a row, with no decision after any of them.

That repetition is the message. A trend moves because one side keeps winning the close. When three sessions in a row end level, the side that had been winning has stopped winning. It has not lost yet; it has stalled.

What the third session adds. One doji gapped below a long red candle is a Doji Star, a question the next candle answers. In a Tri Star the candles around the middle doji are doji as well: the answer is another draw, twice. The middle doji's gapped body was the trend's last push, and the third doji, back above it, shows that push was given up without any winner emerging. Without the gap, three level doji are just a market drifting sideways.

Is the stall real, or is nobody trading? A stock that barely trades prints doji too, because with few trades the open and close often land at the same price. That is not a stalemate between buyers and sellers; it is an absence of both. Two checks tell them apart.

All three put a doji at the low point. They differ in what surrounds it. In a Morning Doji Star the doji sits between two long candles: a strong red one and a strong green one that answers it. The Tri Star has no strong candle at all. It is three draws in a row, so it shows the trend stopping, not yet the new side taking over.

An Abandoned Baby needs the doji's whole range to gap clear of its neighbors, shadows included. A Tri Star needs only the bodies to gap. If the shadows overlap, as they usually do, it can still be a Tri Star.

In the bearish form, buyers stop winning the close at the top of a rally. The middle doji opens above the first one's body, the rally's last push, and goes nowhere. Every check in this guide applies upside down.

The larger trend. A Tri Star that forms where a falling stock meets a rising 50-day moving average is a pullback (a dip within a larger uptrend) stalling, not a downtrend ending. Read the Candlesticks + Moving Averages guide →

Support. Three sessions of draws at the floor of a trading range (a price where buying has stopped declines before) show that floor holding again. Read the Candlesticks + Trading Ranges guide →

Volume. Normal or heavy volume across the three doji is what separates a stalemate from a quiet market. Read the Candlesticks + Volume guide →

The Tri Star is the plainest way a trend can stop. No big candle, no takeover: just three sessions in a row where neither side wins the close, with one failed push in the middle.

Read it as a stall, not yet a reversal. Check that real trading produced those draws and expect to see the pattern rarely. Then let the next decisive close tell you which way the stall resolved: above the pattern's high, or below its low.