What is Shooting star? — chart signal explained
The hammer flipped upside down. A long wick stretches upward while a small body sits at the bottom — a record of price spiking hard during the period, failing to hold, and sliding back down by the close.
When does it fire? — BaroBara criteria
The signal turns on when the upper wick is more than twice the body and the lower wick is shorter than the body. As with the hammer, candle color isn't part of the rule.
How traders usually read it
The picture is an attempted push higher getting sold into and rejected. When it shows up near the highs after an extended climb, traders often take it as a sign the rally may be running out of energy.
What to watch out for
There's no location check, so the same shape at the bottom of a decline (traditionally called an "inverted hammer" and usually read as a bounce setup) is also tagged as a shooting star here. Strong uptrends frequently shrug these off — a brief pause, then higher — and single-candle patterns are noisy by nature.
What the data actually shows (BTC 1h)
The common reading is a drop — but what actually happened matters more. This signal has fired 879 times on BTC 1h; across the most recent 300, price reached the small target (+0.25%) first about 54% of the time. Widen the target to ±1% and it becomes about 47%. A historical probability, not a guaranteed direction — and it shifts with market regime.
Odds and expected value — with symmetric target and stop (±)
Exactly the barobara framing: which side got hit first, +X% or −X%. Target and stop are set to the same %, and the win rate is how often the upside (+X%) was reached first.
| Target = stop (±) | Win rate (+ first) | EV (before fees) |
|---|---|---|
| ±0.25% | 54% | +0.02% |
| ±0.5% | 47% | -0.03% |
| ±0.75% | 48% | -0.03% |
| ±1% | 47% | -0.06% |
| ±1.5% | 49% | -0.03% |
| ±2% | 51% | +0.04% |
Broken down by market regime
⚠️ This table uses a different basis than the symmetric (±) table above — a small +0.25% target with a wide −2.5% stop (fees included). The small target makes the win rate look high while EV is often negative — exactly what signal groups hide. And the same signal behaves differently across regimes.
| Regime | Win rate (+0.25% target) | EV (−2.5% stop) | Sample |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bear market | 85% | -0.16% | N=282 |
| Sideways | 91% | -0.07% | N=306 |
| Bull market | 87% | -0.17% | N=271 |
Recent occurrences
How far price actually moved the last few times this signal fired (MFE = maximum favorable excursion).
| Date | MFE | Result |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-06-20 | 1.19% | ✅ hit |
| 2026-06-21 | 2.26% | ✅ hit |
| 2026-06-22 | 0.52% | ✅ hit 🔴 stopped |
| 2026-06-23 | 2.56% | ✅ hit |
| 2026-06-26 | 0.62% | ✅ hit 🔴 stopped |
| 2026-06-27 | 1.38% | ✅ hit |
| 2026-06-27 | 1.53% | ✅ hit |
| 2026-07-03 | 0.29% | ✅ hit 🔴 stopped |
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