What is Three black crows?
Uchta qora qarg'a
In short
Three long red candles in a row, each opening inside the previous body and closing near its low. A sign that sellers have taken control.
Three black crows is a bearish pattern of three long red candles in a row — the opposite of three white soldiers. Each candle opens inside the previous body and closes near the low of its own range.
Conditions
- All three candles have long bodies and small lower wicks (sellers pressed until the close).
- Each close is lower than the one before.
- Opens are inside the previous body — the decline is steady, like stairs going down.
What it means
Three strong down closes in a row show that sellers have taken control. Especially after a long rally, an evening star or a failed push at resistance, it is a serious sign of a trend change.
Caution
When the pattern completes, price has already fallen a lot; a short-term oversold state and a sharp bounce are possible. For that reason it is more often used as a signal to exit longs or postpone buying than to open a fresh short. Crows appearing after a long decline may simply be panic — the last wave of selling.
For an investor who bought at $73.70: the third candle of the evening star closed at $77.60 — exiting there keeps a +$3.90 gain. Whoever waited for the three black crows to finish saw the gain shrink to +$0.30. In this course, bearish patterns are a reason to exit or not to buy.
Example
Illustrative: after a stock tops at $60:
- Day 1: open $60.00, close $57.50
- Day 2: open $58.20, close $55.40
- Day 3: open $56.00, close $52.90
Opens are inside the previous bodies ($58.20 within $57.50–$60.00; $56.00 within $55.40–$58.20). Decline over three days: ($60.00 − $52.90) ÷ $60.00 ≈ 11.8%.
A trader who bought at $50 and had raised the stop to $54 would have been stopped out by day 3 at the latest. A trader holding without a stop gave back most of the gain: of the $10 profit at the top, $2.90 remains.
Mistakes and tips
Chasing a short after the pattern completes is risky: price often bounces sharply, and the stop above the pattern's top is very far away.
If you are long, the crows are a cue to review your stop-loss and your plan.
Crows at the end of a long decline may signal exhaustion rather than a new trend — look at the context.
Frequently asked questions
- Should I sell when three black crows appear?
- Many traders treat it as a reason to reduce longs or tighten stops. But the decision depends on your own plan and the context; the pattern itself is no guarantee.
- Does price bounce after three black crows?
- A short-term bounce is common because price fell quickly. That bounce does not mean the trend has recovered — it often stalls at resistance.
Learn it in the Academy
This term is covered with hands-on examples and a quiz in these lessons of the interactive course.
Try the theory without risk
Open a free account: demo trading with a $10,000 virtual balance, a trading journal, calculators and a step-by-step course.