Three Black Crows
Three Black Crows is a candlestick pattern consisting of three consecutive bearish candles with successively lower closes and minimal lower wicks, historically observed following an uptrend or at price highs.
Three Black Crows is the bearish counterpart to Three White Soldiers. The pattern forms when three consecutive sessions each produce a bearish candlestick — with the close below the open — and each candle opens within or near the body of the preceding candle before closing lower than the prior session. The resulting pattern shows three descending, long-bodied candles with little to no lower wick, indicating that sellers dominated throughout each session and that prices closed near their lows.
In historical candlestick studies, Three Black Crows appeared at price highs or following extended advances, where it was interpreted as a sign that selling pressure had overtaken buying across three full sessions without significant buyer-driven recovery. The absence of long lower wicks indicated that buyers had not been able to push prices meaningfully off the session lows, differentiating the pattern from a weaker three-session decline where buyers mounted intraday recoveries.
Historical analysis evaluated the pattern's reliability against several quality criteria. Long, equal-sized bodies across all three candles were considered more significant than a pattern with one large candle and two smaller ones. Candles opening in the middle of the prior body rather than at the prior low were considered ideal, as gaps lower at the open would suggest panic rather than organized selling. Volume ideally expanded across the three sessions.
The Identical Three Crows variant, sometimes noted in historical studies, showed each candle opening exactly at the prior session's close — indicating uninterrupted selling from open to close with no recovery gaps between sessions.
Three Black Crows was recognized in the Japanese candlestick tradition centuries before its introduction to Western market analysis. It remains one of the more visually prominent multi-session bearish patterns, though historical studies consistently emphasized that context — particularly the location within a trend and proximity to support or resistance — significantly influenced its analytical weight.