Bulkowski’s Bearish Engulfing

Written and copyright © 2008-2010 by Thomas N. Bulkowski. All rights reserved.

In my book, Encyclopedia of Candlestick Charts, pictured on the right, I explore the entire range of candlestick patterns from abandoned babies to windows (not exactly A to Z, but you get the idea), in both bull and bear markets, using almost 5 million candle lines in the tests.

The book takes an in-depth look at 103 candlestick patterns and reports on behavior and rank (3 types: reversal rate, frequency, and overall performance), identification guidelines, performance statistics (tables of general statistics, height, and volume), trading tactics (tables of statistics on reversal rates and performance indicators), and wraps each chapter with a sample trade. I share a sliver of that information below. If you like what you read here, then you will love the book. Help support this website and buy a copy by clicking on the above link.

The bearish engulfing candlestick is one of the more popular and well known candlesticks. It works very well as a bearish reversal, performing that way 79% of the time (ranking 5 out of 103 candlestick types where 1 is best). Unfortunately, the trend after the breakout is short-lived, ranking 91st. Thus, even though price will often reverse, the bearish engulfing candlestick does not imply a lasting reversal.

Important Results

Theoretical performance: Bearish reversal Tested performance: Bearish reversal 79% of the time Frequency rank: 11 Overall performance rank: 91 Best percentage meeting price target: 76% (bear market, down breakout) Best average move in 10 days: -5.92% (bear market, down breakout) Best 10-day performance rank: 21 (bear market, down breakout) All ranks are out of 103 candlestick patterns with the top performer ranking 1. "Best" means the highest rated of the four combinations of bull/bear market, up/down breakouts.

Bearish Engulfing

Discussion

The bearish engulfing candlestick performs best after a downward breakout, but really sucks after an upward one. Compare the ranks of 103 and 100 for upward breakouts in a bull/bear market, respectively, with 25 and 21 for downward breakouts.

The bullish engulfing candlestick is just like it sounds. In an upward price trend, look for a white candle followed by a black candle the body of which overlaps the body of the white candle. By overlaps, I mean the body of the black candle has an open above the prior close and a close below the prior open. The black body is taller than the white body, and everything appears in an upward price trend. Still confused? Just look at a picture of the ideal bearish engulfing candlestick above.

Identification Guidelines

Three Trading Tidbits

If you want a few bones from my Encyclopedia of candlestick charts book, here are three to chew on. The pages refer to the book where the tips appear.

1. Bearish engulfing candles that appear within a third of the yearly low perform best -- page 311.
2. Select tall candles -- page 311.
3. Trade upward retracements in a downward price trend -- page 313.

Example

The bearish engulfing candlestick appears a A, circled in red, on the daily price chart. In an upward price trend, look for a white candle followed by a black candle. The body of the black candle should engulf or overlap the white candle’s body, as shown here. Shadow overlap is not important.

This bearish engulfing candlestick breaks out downward when price closes below the bottom of the candlestick pattern first. Thus, the bearish engulfing candlestick serves as a bearish reversal in this example and in 79% of the other 20,000 that I studied.

Two additional bearish engulfing candlesticks appear at B and C. Candle B acts as another bearish reversal, but C acts as a continuation of the uptrend.

-- Thomas Bulkowski