Discover the nuances of the bearish spinning top, a common candlestick pattern signaling market indecision during a downtrend. Learn how its appearance after a strong downward move can indicate a continuation, with key strategies for effective trading.
What Is a Bearish Spinning Top Candlestick Pattern?
The bearish spinning top pattern is basically a candle that screams indecision. Price whips around during the session, but by the close it’s back near the open.
So you get a lot of movement with very little progress, which often shows up right before a reversal or a choppy consolidation.
On the chart, a spinning top has a small real body and long wicks on both sides. The tight body means the open and close were close together.
The long shadows tell you both sides took a shot. In a bearish read (especially after an uptrend), it’s the market saying: buyers tried to keep the push going, but they couldn’t hold the highs and sellers were willing to hit bids into strength.
Key things to look for:
Small real body, usually sitting around the middle of the candle’s range
Long upper shadow (buyers pushed up, then got rejected)
Long lower shadow (sellers pushed down, but couldn’t keep it there)
Similar-length wicks a lot of the time, showing the tug-of-war stayed balanced
It’s easy to mix this up with a doji candlestick pattern. Both show indecision, but a doji has an almost non-existent body (open and close basically the same). A spinning top still has a visible body.
Dojis tend to be a cleaner “stall” signal, while spinning tops are more like “momentum is fading, but prove it.”
In technical analysis, the bearish spinning top matters most when it shows up after an up leg. That’s where it hints the trend is losing traction and sellers are starting to show up.
Still, the candle itself isn’t a trade. It’s a warning label.
Confirmation is the whole game here. If the next candle closes bearish (especially breaking the spinning top’s low), the setup gets real.
Without that, it’s just noise.
How to Trade a Bearish Spinning Top: Entry, Stop, and Targets
You don’t want to trade this pattern off vibes. The edge comes from structure: location, confirmation, and risk control.
In fast markets, pattern recognition without rules is how you get chopped up.
Five steps that keep it clean:
Find a spinning top after a sustained uptrend, ideally into a known resistance area (prior swing high, weekly level, VWAP bands, top of a channel).
Wait for a bearish confirmation candle that closes below the spinning top’s low.
Check volume on the breakdown. Rising volume is a better signal than a thin drift lower.
Look for confluence: RSI stretched/overbought, MACD rolling over, price extended above key moving averages, or a failed breakout.
Trigger the entry after the confirmation candle closes, not mid-candle.
Stops usually go above the spinning top’s high or just above the nearby resistance shelf. Give it a little room—getting wicked out by a few ticks is common if you park the stop right on the high.
Targets should come from market structure, not hope. First target is typically the nearest support, prior swing low, or a liquidity pocket.
If you want a measured move, you can project the spinning top’s full range from the breakdown area and manage the rest with partials.
Position sizing matters more than the pattern. Keep the risk tight and the math sane—most traders aim for at least 1:2 R:R and risk a small slice of equity (often 1–2%) so one bad trade doesn’t wreck the week.
Confluence boosts the hit rate: support/resistance, Fibonacci retracements, and volume/market profile context. Logging these in a journal helps you figure out which versions of the setup actually pay and which ones are just pretty candles.
Bearish Spinning Top Limitations and Best Confirmation Indicators
Spinning tops work best with extra tools, not instead of them. RSI above 70 near the high can support the “overextended” read. MACD rolling over can help confirm momentum is shifting.
Moving averages often act like dynamic support/resistance, so a spinning top into the 20/50/200-day area can matter. Bollinger Bands help too—if price is tagging the outer band and then prints a spinning top, it’s often a sign the move is stretched.
Volume is the tie-breaker: weak demand into the highs, then heavier selling on the break, is what you want to see.
The pattern also hits harder when it lines up with bigger structure—resistance at the top of an ascending channel, a triangle apex, a failed breakout, or a clear rejection wick at a major level. That confluence is what turns “indecision” into “high odds.”
Main limitations to respect:
Lots of false signals if you don’t wait for confirmation
Less reliable in thin markets and low-volume sessions
Requires patience; early entries get punished
Context-heavy and sometimes subjective
Often leads to consolidation, not an immediate reversal
No single candle is a cheat code. Multi-timeframe checks, volume context, and clean levels matter more.
And with spinning tops flipping direction only about half the time (roughly 50%), the pattern belongs inside a risk-managed process, not at the center of it.
How Do Spinning Tops Behave in Uptrends vs Downtrends?
Spinning tops are extremely context-driven. Read them wrong and you’ll take a lot of junk trades.
Tom Bulkowski’s stats get quoted a lot here—reversals happen roughly 50% of the time—which is another way of saying the candle is neutral until price confirms.
After a sustained uptrend, a spinning top near resistance can act like a reversal “setup candle.” It shows the push higher got sold into, and buyers didn’t defend the close.
That’s why it’s often treated as one of the better uses of the pattern—but only with follow-through.
In a downtrend, the same candle can just be a pause before continuation. Sometimes it’s sellers catching their breath. Other times it’s actual exhaustion.
The difference is what happens next: does price break down again, or does it reclaim levels and start building higher lows?
On its own, a spinning top is a “maybe.” The confirmation candle is what turns it into a trade idea.
A strong bearish confirmation is a close below the spinning top’s low, ideally with momentum and no immediate snapback.
Volume helps. If the spinning top prints on lighter volume and the breakdown candle prints heavier volume, that’s a better read than two low-volume candles in a dead tape.
Spinning Top vs Doji vs Shooting Star vs Bearish Engulfing
Spinning tops and dojis get lumped together because both are indecision candles. The difference is the body. A doji has almost no real body, while a spinning top has a small but visible one, usually centered between two longer wicks.
That small detail changes how traders treat it: dojis can be sharper reversal tells, spinning tops need more proof.
Also don’t confuse a spinning top with a stronger bearish signal like a shooting star or bearish engulfing. Shooting stars and bearish engulfing candles show clearer rejection and directional intent.
A spinning top is more like the market tapping the brakes.
That’s the real value here: it’s flexible, but it’s uncertain. Treat it as a context clue, not a standalone trigger, and you’ll avoid a lot of forced trades.
Why Does a Spinning Top Form? Market Forces Explained
Inside the session, both sides get their turn. Bulls push to a high, printing the upper wick. Bears drive it down, printing the lower wick.
But the close ends up near the open, so neither side actually “won” the day. That’s why the body is small and the message is hesitation.
What you’re seeing is a stalemate: buying pressure and selling pressure are close to balanced. Sentiment flips back and forth, and the market can’t commit.
Market Force | Representation | Implication |
|---|---|---|
Buying Pressure | Upper wick extension | Bulls tried to extend the rally, but couldn’t hold the highs |
Selling Pressure | Lower shadow extension | Bears pushed lower, but couldn’t keep price pinned down |
Final Outcome | Small body near open/close | No clear control, trend needs confirmation |
This candle gets more meaningful after a clean uptrend. In that spot, it often marks “buyers are tired” rather than “buyers are strong.” Sellers don’t need to dominate yet—they just need to stop the follow-through.
If price starts failing at a prior high, a weekly level, or the top of an ascending channel, that’s usually where the spinning top starts to matter.
What Does a Bearish Spinning Top Signal About Trader Psychology?
After an uptrend, a bearish spinning top often means the crowd is losing conviction. Bulls can still push it up intraday, but they can’t defend the close.
At the same time, bears aren’t fully in control yet—they’re just showing they’re willing to sell into strength and test the floor.
The long wicks are the footprint of that fight. Buyers chase, sellers fade, stops get run on both sides, and the market still ends up near where it started.
That’s when traders start second-guessing: is this just a pause, or is distribution starting?
Even though the candle is neutral, the location gives it weight. When the tape goes from clean trend candles to a spinning top, it’s often a yellow flag that momentum is fading and the easy part of the move might be done.
That’s usually the point where tightening risk, reducing size, or demanding confirmation becomes the smart play.
Bearish Spinning Top Pattern: Key Takeaways
The bearish spinning top is a solid signal of indecision, especially after a strong uptrend. Small body, long wicks, no follow-through.
It can hint at a reversal, but it’s not tradable until the next candle confirms.
Because the hit rate is basically a coin flip, you need confluence: RSI/MACD, moving averages, volume, and clean support/resistance. That’s what filters the garbage and keeps you aligned with what price is actually doing.
If you treat the spinning top as one piece of the puzzle—and manage risk like it can fail—you’ll get a lot more consistency than trying to short every “top-looking” candle you see.
The fastest way to get good at this is repetition: mark them up on historical charts, track what happens after, and paper trade the cleanest versions before putting real money behind it.
How Can a Trading Journal Help You Get Better at Trading Bearish Spinning Tops?
Because the bearish spinning top is a “maybe” until price confirms, the real skill is learning which contexts actually follow through: the right resistance zones, the cleanest confirmation breaks, the volume profile that tends to show real selling, and the confluence stack (RSI/MACD, moving averages, structure) that improves outcomes. A trading journal turns that from a vague impression into measurable feedback. By logging each setup’s entry trigger, stop placement (above the high vs above the level), targets, and whether you waited for a close below the low, you can review mistakes like early entries, oversized risk, or ignoring thin volume. Over time, performance tracking makes it easier to see your PnL distribution, win rate by condition, and which markets/timeframes produce the most reliable statistics. Using a structured tracker with tagging and analytics—such as Rizetrade trading journal analytics for pattern-based performance tracking—helps you monitor these metrics consistently and refine the rules that keep spinning top trades disciplined.