Bearish Candle

A bearish candle is a candlestick whose close is below its open, meaning price finished that period lower than it started.

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Last updated 29 October 2026

A bearish candle is a candlestick whose close is below its open: price finished the period lower than it started. The body runs from the open at the top down to the close at the bottom. It is the opposite of a bullish candle. Traders read it together with the candles around it and the timeframe it sits on.

How do you read a bearish candle?

On a bearish candle the open is the top of the body and the close is the bottom, because price finished the period lower. The wicks show how far price travelled beyond the body: the upper wick reaches the high and the lower wick reaches the low. The table maps each part.

Part Where it is on a bearish candle
Open Top of the body
Close Bottom of the body
Upper wick From the open up to the high
Lower wick From the close down to the low

A long body closing near the low describes steady selling through the period. A long lower wick on a bearish candle means price fell further during the period, then recovered some of the fall before the close. The full anatomy is in how to read a candlestick chart.

A red bearish candle with its body running from the open at the top down to the close at the bottom, an upper wick to the high and a lower wick to the low, labelled with the example prices 18.2500, 18.2600, 18.1700 and 18.1800
On a bearish candle the open is the top of the body and the close is the bottom, because price finished lower.

Worked example: bearish candle on USDZAR

A D1 candle on USDZAR opens at 18.2500, trades up to 18.2600, down to 18.1700, and closes at 18.1800.

Measure Calculation Result
Direction 18.1800 < 18.2500 Bearish for USDZAR
Body 18.2500 − 18.1800 0.0700 (700 pips)
Upper wick 18.2600 − 18.2500 0.0100
Lower wick 18.1800 − 18.1700 0.0100

For a currency pair, the candle describes the first currency against the second. A bearish USDZAR candle means the dollar fell against the second currency, the quote currency, so that currency strengthened. On a position of 10,000 US dollars, the 0.0700 body is 700 units of the quote currency, about $38.50 at 18.1800: a gain for a short position and a loss for a long one.

What should you check on a bearish candle?

Before reading a bearish candle, check the previous close, the higher timeframe and your chart's colour settings. Each can change what the candle tells you: a gap can hide where price really stands, a larger timeframe can tell a different story, and colours differ between charts. The details are below.

How do you see bearish candles in MetaTrader 5?

In MetaTrader 5, bearish candles use the bear candle body colour, a chart setting you can change in chart properties (F8). Use the Data Window (Ctrl+D) to read the exact open and close of any candle, since candles are drawn from Bid prices. That keeps each reading exact, even when a candle is too small to judge by eye.

What do traders often get wrong about bearish candles?

A common mistake is reading a big bearish candle as a sign that the market is about to crash. A large bearish body records a large fall that has already happened, and the following candles show what price does next. The bullish vs bearish page covers how the label applies to trends.

Sources

Learn it properly in the full lesson: Candlestick Chart: What It Is and How to Read One

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