Shooting star candlestick: definition, TA-Lib test and track record

A shooting star appears at the end of a rally as a small body near the bottom of the day's range, topped by a long upper shadow. Price opened strong, ran higher still, and then collapsed back to around the open by the close. On a chart it looks like a streak of light falling to earth, which is where the name comes from.

In Japanese candlestick vocabulary a star is any small body that gaps away from the body before it. The shooting star is the star version of a bearish reversal: it gaps up, extends the advance intraday, and then gives the extension back. That gap is not decoration. It is part of the definition TA-Lib uses, and it is the feature that separates this candle from its mirror image, the Inverted hammer candlestick: TA-Lib rules and real results, which gaps the other way after a decline.

This page explains how the candle is built, the exact test Finabase runs, why shooting stars confirm about twice as often as hanging men, two very different 2025–2026 examples, and a test of 450 occurrences on 60 large US stocks and ETFs.

What a shooting star looks like

Take the candle apart:

• The upper shadow is the story. It records how far buyers pushed the price beyond the open before the push failed. Nison's guideline is a shadow at least twice the body.
• The body is small and low. The close ends near the open. A red body, where the close is under the open, shows a fuller reversal of the day's gains; a green one is still accepted.
• The lower shadow is tiny. The session barely traded under its body.
• The body gaps above yesterday's body. This is the star placement. A candle with the same proportions sitting inside the prior body is not a star in the traditional sense.

The exact rules Finabase uses

Finabase marks shooting stars on charts and in the scanner with TA-Lib's CDLSHOOTINGSTAR. Every size is relative to the stock's own recent candles:

The output is −100 when all four hold. There is no bullish output.

The first three rows are the same tests TA-Lib applies to the inverted hammer. The fourth is reversed: the inverted hammer needs a body gap down, the shooting star a body gap up. The two can never fire on the same bar, and across our 29,760-bar sample they never did.

Differences from the textbook

• No uptrend check. The gap is measured against one candle only. In our sample 66.3% of shooting stars followed a 10-session rise, a higher share than for most patterns because a gap above the prior body tends to happen in advancing markets. The other third appeared without a preceding rally.
• Shadow length is loose. The code asks for an upper shadow longer than the body, not twice as long.
• Doji bodies count. About 21% of shooting stars in our sample were also flagged as a gravestone doji, a candle whose open and close are nearly equal. Finabase's scanner puts the gravestone doji in its Bullish list (TA-Lib always scores it +100) and the same bar's shooting star in its Bearish list.

The trading logic behind the shape

A shooting star day starts with enthusiasm. The open gaps above the previous body, which means overnight demand was strong enough to reprice the stock. Buyers then extend the move. At some point supply overwhelms them: holders take profits, sellers who were waiting for a higher price act, and late buyers stop chasing. By the close the gain has evaporated.

The bearish reading is that the market tested higher prices and refused them. Everyone who bought in the upper part of the shadow is now holding a loss on the same day they bought. If the next session trades lower, some of them sell, and the rejection becomes a reversal.

The counterargument, which our data supports more than the textbook does, is that a strong uptrend absorbs this kind of intraday profit-taking all the time. A failed push on one day is common in a healthy advance.

Confirmation: frequent, but not decisive

The usual confirmation is a close below the shooting star's low on the next session. A lower open, or a red candle that closes well into the star's body, are looser versions.

Because the lower shadow is required to be tiny, the low sits right under the body, so it does not take much of a decline to close below it. In our test 147 of 450 shooting stars (33%) confirmed that way. The Hanging man candlestick: rules, context and what the data shows, whose long lower shadow pushes its low far away, confirmed only 17% of the time. Easy confirmation is also weak confirmation: a close just under a nearby level is a small event.

Extra evidence traders look for: volume well above average on the star (heavy selling into the rejection), a star at a prior resistance level, or bearish divergence on the Relative Strength Index (RSI): how to read and use it.

Two shooting stars, opposite outcomes

Boeing, March 24, 2025. BA had risen 22.1% in ten sessions. On March 24 it opened at $182.03, above the prior session's $178.11 close, touched $184.40, and closed at $180.90. The $2.37 upper shadow was about twice the $1.13 body and the $0.46 lower shadow was under the $0.59 limit. The next session closed at $182.59, above the star's low, so the strict confirmation did not occur. A week later the market was in the early-April 2025 sell-off: BA was down 5.7% after five sessions and 23.2% after ten. The candle was in the right place, but a broad market shock did most of the work.

Broadcom, April 9, 2026. AVGO had gained 11.3% in ten sessions. It opened at $352.30, just 55 cents above the prior body, reached $358.70 and closed at $354.91, a green star with a $3.79 upper shadow over a $2.61 body. The next session gapped up and closed at $371.55. After five sessions the stock was 12.3% higher, after ten 18.3% higher. The rejected high of April 9 turned out to be a pause, not a top.

What 450 shooting stars did next

We ran CDLSHOOTINGSTAR over daily bars from October 30, 2024 to October 29, 2026 for 60 large US stocks and ETFs, and recorded whether the price was lower five sessions later.

Confirmed figures start from the confirmation close. 445 of the 450 stars had five full sessions of data after them.

• Below the baseline. Shooting stars were lower a week later 46.1% of the time, a touch less often than a random day. As a stand-alone sell signal the candle had no edge here.
• Positive average returns. Prices rose an average of 0.71% over five sessions and 0.88% over ten after a shooting star. In a rising market, stars that print during strong advances were often followed by more advance.
• Confirmation barely moved it. 47.6% of confirmed stars were lower five sessions after the confirmation close, about one percentage point better than any day.

Shooting star compared with similar candles

An educational outline

How practitioners describe using the candle. Not a recommendation.

1. Look for a stretched advance into a level that has capped price before.
2. Treat the star as a question. A close below its low on the next day is the minimum evidence; some traders want a second lower close.
3. Invalidation sits above the star's high. A close there means the rejected prices have been accepted after all.
4. Size from the distance. Illustrative numbers: star high $64.50, confirmation close $60.80, so about $3.70 of risk per share. A $370 risk budget means 100 shares.

For holders of an existing long position, the star is more often used to tighten a stop than to reverse a position.

How Finabase shows shooting stars

• On charts. Add the Shooting Star study (the Boeing link above has it on). Each flagged bar is marked so you can see the candle's history on that symbol.
• In the scanner. TA-Lib only outputs −100 for this pattern, so it is listed under Bearish on the S&P 500 candlestick scan. The scan reports the latest session's shape, not the trend.
• On the Signals tab. In the Candlestick gauge, a shooting star in the last eight bars is a Sell vote. In our sample it was voting Sell on 11.5% of trading days.

Frequently asked questions

Is a shooting star a reliable sell signal?

Not on its own. In our sample 46.1% of shooting stars were followed by a lower price after five sessions, slightly less than a random day's 46.7%.

What is the difference between a shooting star and an inverted hammer?

Location. Both have a small body at the bottom and a long upper shadow. A shooting star gaps above the previous body after an advance; an inverted hammer gaps below it after a decline.

Does a shooting star need a gap?

In TA-Lib it does: the bottom of its body must be above the top of the previous body. That matches the traditional meaning of a star. Some sources accept a candle without the gap.

Can a shooting star be green?

Yes. The body color does not affect TA-Lib's test. A red star is often considered somewhat stronger because the close finished under the open.

Summary

The shooting star is a gap higher that fails within the same session: small body, long upper shadow, tiny lower shadow, body above the previous one. TA-Lib checks those four things and nothing about the trend. In our 450-case test it carried no edge as a sell signal, prices rose on average afterwards, and its easy confirmation added little. It is best treated as a note that buyers met resistance, to be weighed against the trend, the level and what the next sessions do.