Bulkowski’s Bullish Tri-Star

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 bullish tri-star candlestick pattern is one of those patterns that almost adds value. Almost. It has a reversal rate just above random -- too far away to complain about, but not far enough to be really useful in detecting a reversal of the primary price trend. It has a frequency rank of 79, making it rare, so you will have trouble finding this candlestick pattern. However, once a breakout occurs the overall performance rank suggests the move might be worth betting on. A closer look at the performance numbers shows that it does perform well across all market conditions and breakout directions. Reversals tend to work better than continuations, according to the numbers.

Important Results

Theoretical performance: Bullish reversal Tested performance: Bullish reversal 60% of the time Frequency rank: 79 Overall performance rank: 28 Best percentage meeting price target: 77% (bear market, up breakout) Best average move in 10 days: 5.11% (bear market, up breakout) Best 10-day performance rank: 26 (bear market, up 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.

Bullish Tri-Star

Discussion

The bullish tri-star candlestick acts as a bullish reversal in theory and also in reality, but only 60% of the time. That is close to random, 50%. The overall performance rank is 28, which is quite high up the performance list. It suggests the post breakout trend can be a worthwhile move.

The best average move 10 days after the breakout is a rise of 5.11% in a bear market. That ranks 26th. I consider moves of 6% or higher to be good ones, so the bullish tri-star candlestick falls short. Drilling into the data, the numbers shows that the pattern performs slightly better after an upward breakout than a downward one.

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. Bullish tri-star candles that appear within a third of the yearly high tend to act as reversals most often -- page 825.
2. Select tall candles for the best performance -- page 823-824.
3. For the best performance look for the bullish tri-star as part of a downward retracement in an upward price trend -- page 825.

Example

The chart shows a bullish tri-star candlestick circled in red on the daily scale. This bullish tri-star appears after a downward price trend that takes the stock much lower, bottoming in the bullish tri-star.

Three doji appear, with the middle one below the bodies of the two adjacent doji. Since the price trend leading to the tri-star is downward and price breaks out upward, this candlestick pattern acts as a bullish reversal. An upward breakout occurs when price closes above the top of the candlestick pattern, by the way.

The price trend shown is not the optimum setup, although this one does well. The setup that I have found to work best is when the primary (longer term) price trend is upward and the bullish tri-star pattern appears as a small downward retracement of that upward price trend. When the stock breaks out upward, price joins the existing primary trend and away it flies.

-- Thomas Bulkowski