Bearish Marubozu: one-sided selling with no wicks
The down-bar version of the marubozu — open at the high, close at the low — and the same exhaustion-versus-momentum question in reverse.
Bearish Marubozu is free on Basis — the button opens a live crypto chart with it already applied. No account, no trial and no limit on how many indicators you add.
Open the chartWhat it measures
A bearish marubozu opens at or near the bar’s high and closes at or near its low, with no meaningful wick on either end.
It measures uninterrupted selling for the full duration of the bar — not a burst partway through, but pressure that held from the opening print to the close.
The name comes from the Japanese for "close-cropped" or "bald": nothing left at either end of the candle to trim.
How it is calculated
These are the steps Basis performs, verified against the published definition.
- 1
Open equals or is within a small tolerance of the bar’s high.
- 2
Close equals or is within a small tolerance of the bar’s low.
- 3
No meaningful wick on either side.
- 4
The body therefore spans effectively the entire high-low range, which is what separates a marubozu from an ordinary large down bar that still left a wick somewhere.
How to read it
- Strongest as a breakdown confirmation bar, closing through a support level with no wick showing buyers stepped in at any point.
- In an already-extended decline, the same bar can just as easily mark capitulation as the start of a new leg down.
- A marubozu that appears on rising volume describes broad participation in the move; one on thin volume can be a handful of large orders walking price down with little real disagreement being tested.
- Where it lands relative to recent structure decides which of those two readings is more likely — a fresh breakdown below a range and a bar deep into an already-stretched decline are not the same event.
Where it misleads
Treating every bearish marubozu as a fresh sell signal ignores that the bar could be the final, exhausted leg of a decline rather than its beginning. A single one-sided bar says control was total for that bar’s duration — it does not say whether the side in control is just getting started or has already spent itself, and reading it as automatically bearish-continuation is the most common misuse of the pattern.
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Updated 2026-08-27 · Educational reference, not financial advice.