Shooting Star: the inverted hammer shape as a top warning

What it measures

A shooting star has the same shape as an inverted hammer — small body near the bottom of the range, long upper wick, minimal lower wick — but forms after an uptrend rather than a decline.

It measures a failed push to new highs within the bar: price extended up and sellers took almost all of it back before the close.

How it is calculated

These are the steps Basis performs, verified against the published definition.

1. 1

   Body in the lower portion of the range.

2. 2

   Upper wick at least roughly double the body.

3. 3

   Minimal lower wick.

4. 4

   Occurs after an existing advance, which is what makes it a shooting star rather than an inverted hammer.

How to read it

• The rejected new high is the signal — buyers reached for more and could not hold it.
• Confirmation, a lower close the following bar, separates a real reversal candidate from a one-bar wick that gets absorbed the next session.
• The size of the upper wick relative to recent bars matters — a shooting star that barely qualifies says less than one that pushed unusually far past the surrounding range before giving it all back.
• A shooting star at a level that already carried resistance is a stronger case than the same wick appearing in open space mid-trend with nothing obvious for buyers to have been rejected by.
• Volume on the push into the wick, where it is visible, separates real buying that met resistance from a thin book that simply let price wick through and snap back.

Where it misleads

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