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Start Learning → Browse All Articles →Harami candlestick pattern refers to a two-candle formation in which a large candle is followed by a noticeably smaller one whose entire body sits within the range of the first candle’s body, producing a shape that resembles a mother candle carrying a much smaller one inside it — which is where the pattern gets its name, drawn from an older word for pregnant. It is read as a sign that the strong, one-directional momentum of the first candle has run into hesitation, rather than as a definitive signal that the trend is about to reverse outright. This piece works through what the pattern actually looks like, why the size and placement of the second candle matter, how it differs from a similar-looking formation, and what else needs to line up before treating it as more than a pause in an existing move.
The pattern needs exactly two candles to form. The first is a full-bodied candle reflecting a decisive move in one direction, and the second opens and closes entirely within the body of that first candle, with a visibly smaller range. The contrast in size between the two candles is what makes the pattern visually distinct — a large, confident move followed immediately by a small, contained one sitting inside it.
What matters is the body of each candle, not necessarily the full high-to-low range including wicks, though many chart readers also look for the second candle’s wicks to stay reasonably close to its own small body. The tighter and smaller the second candle is relative to the first, the more pronounced the visual contraction, and the more attention the pattern tends to draw from anyone scanning a chart for early signs that a move is losing steam.
The first candle in the pair reflects one side of the market being firmly in control for that session, with a wide range and a close well away from the open. The second candle’s much smaller range, contained entirely within the first, suggests that same conviction did not carry through — buyers and sellers effectively reached a standoff, producing a session with far less net movement despite trading activity continuing.
A bearish harami forms after a sustained upward move, when a strong up candle is followed by a small contained candle, suggesting the buying pressure that drove the prior session has paused and sellers may be starting to contest the move. A bullish harami forms in the mirror situation, after a sustained decline, when a strong down candle is followed by a small contained candle suggesting selling pressure has eased. In both cases the pattern is read the same way structurally — a loss of conviction relative to the candle before it — just applied at opposite ends of a prevailing move.
An inside bar and a harami look similar at first glance, since both describe a smaller candle contained within the range of the one before it, and the two terms are sometimes used loosely as if interchangeable. The more precise distinction is that an inside bar is typically defined using the full high-to-low range of both candles, while a harami is specifically about the relationship between the two candle bodies, with less emphasis placed on where the wicks fall.
In practice, many formations satisfy both definitions at once, but a chart can occasionally show a contained second candle by the inside-bar definition while its body pokes slightly outside the first candle’s body, which would not strictly qualify as a harami under the stricter body-based reading. Being precise about which definition is being applied matters most when a trader is scanning charts systematically for one pattern specifically, since a looser reading can produce a noticeably different, and often larger, set of matches.
Not every harami carries equal weight. A second candle that is only marginally smaller than the first, sitting near one edge of the first candle’s body, reflects a much smaller contraction in momentum than a second candle that is tiny and sits close to the midpoint of the first candle’s body. The latter reflects a far more decisive stall in the prevailing move and is generally treated as the more meaningful version of the pattern.
Some chart readers also pay attention to whether the second candle sits closer to the top or the bottom of the first candle’s body, treating a second candle positioned near the far end of the prior move — for instance, near the top of a strong up candle in a bearish harami — as carrying slightly more significance than one sitting closer to the middle, since it suggests the reversal in sentiment began almost immediately rather than gradually through the session.
A harami on its own describes hesitation, not a confirmed reversal, and treating the two as equivalent is one of the more common misreadings of this pattern. Confirmation typically comes from what happens in the sessions immediately following the pattern — a subsequent candle that closes convincingly in the new direction, ideally accompanied by an expansion in trading activity, adds meaningfully more weight than the two-candle pattern provides by itself.
Waiting for that confirmation does mean giving up some of the earliest possible entry, since a trader acting only once confirmation appears is, by definition, entering after the pattern that first flagged the hesitation. That tradeoff is generally accepted as worthwhile, because acting on the harami alone, before anything confirms it, means acting on a pattern whose failure rate — cases where momentum simply resumes in the original direction — is meaningful enough that confirmation materially improves the odds of the read being correct.
A harami appearing in the middle of an already choppy, directionless stretch of trading says very little, since contraction in range is unremarkable when the market was not showing strong directional conviction to begin with. The pattern is far more informative when it appears after a clearly sustained move, where the sudden contraction in range represents a genuine and visible break from what preceded it.
A harami forming near a level that has already acted as support or resistance in the past tends to be read as more meaningful than the same pattern forming in an area with no prior significance, since the hesitation it reflects lines up with a level where other market participants are also more likely to be watching closely. This overlap between a pattern-based signal and a level-based one is one of the more common ways chart readers try to filter which harami formations are worth paying closer attention to.
The harami is a common pattern, which is precisely what makes it easy to spot too often and act on too readily. In a market that is simply consolidating after a move, without any real change in the underlying balance between buyers and sellers, harami-shaped pairs of candles can appear repeatedly without any of them leading to a genuine reversal, and treating each one as a signal in isolation produces a string of low-quality entries.
A harami forming on a shorter intraday timeframe reflects a much briefer pause than the same-looking pattern forming on a daily or weekly chart, simply because each candle represents a smaller window of trading activity. This is worth being explicit about, because the pattern’s visual shape is identical across timeframes even though the amount of real market behaviour condensed into each candle is not. A trader who treats a harami on a very short intraday chart with the same weight as one forming on a daily chart after weeks of sustained trend is likely to overreact to noise, and the pattern is best interpreted relative to the timeframe a trader is actually working with.
It is also common for a harami on a longer timeframe to be made up of several smaller, choppier candles on a shorter timeframe underneath it, which is a useful reminder that the pattern is a compressed summary of underlying activity rather than a literal record of only two decisions being made by the market. Looking at a shorter timeframe underneath a harami spotted on a longer chart can sometimes reveal whether the contraction in range reflects a genuine standoff or simply a quiet stretch with little participation either way.
Trading activity during the first candle of a harami is typically elevated, consistent with the decisive move that candle represents. What happens to activity during the second, smaller candle is one of the more useful additional details to check: a genuine stall accompanied by activity that also drops off suggests participants on both sides are stepping back, consistent with a real pause. A second candle that is small in price range but still sees heavy activity can suggest a more active tug-of-war between buyers and sellers rather than simple disinterest, which some chart readers treat as a slightly different, and at times more meaningful, version of the same visual pattern. Neither version is inherently more reliable in every case, but distinguishing between a quiet stall and an actively contested one adds a layer of information that the candle shapes alone do not fully capture.
No. It signals hesitation in the prevailing move, not a confirmed reversal. Many harami formations are followed by a resumption of the original trend rather than an actual change in direction, which is why confirmation from subsequent price action matters.
A bearish harami forms after a sustained upward move and suggests fading buying pressure. A bullish harami forms after a sustained decline and suggests fading selling pressure. Both share the same two-candle structure, applied at opposite ends of a prevailing move.
An inside bar is generally defined using the full high-to-low range of the two candles, while a harami is defined more specifically by the relationship between their bodies. Many formations satisfy both, but the two definitions are not always identical.
It is generally treated as more reliable when combined with other context, such as a nearby support or resistance level, a change in trading activity, and a subsequent confirming candle, rather than acted on purely by itself.
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