The bar you buy on. Seven classic entry patterns, scanned across every ASX security after each close — and always shown with the context that decides whether they mean anything.
Most of the work in trend following is deciding what to own. Setup bars answer the smaller, sharper question that comes next: when. Volatility contracts into a single quiet bar. A stock probes lower and closes at its high. Yesterday's low is taken out at the open and reclaimed by the close. A big down day is followed by an open clear above it. Each of these is a fingerprint left by supply drying up or demand stepping in, and each one gives a natural place to put a stop.
We scan for seven of them every night and store each signal with the context it fired in — whether the bar sat on a rising 50, 150 or 200-day moving average, and how far above its 50-day average the stock was trading. A hammer at a rising 50-day average during a pullback is a setup. The same hammer 30% extended is a warning.
An NR7 is simply the narrowest daily range of the last seven sessions; an NR4, the narrowest of four. Range is a proxy for disagreement, so a bar that barely moves is a bar where buyers and sellers have stopped arguing. That quiet rarely lasts — contraction resolves into expansion, and in an uptrend it usually resolves upward.
These bars are also where risk is cheapest. A narrow bar means a nearby stop, so the same dollar risk buys a larger position than a wide, emotional bar does.
An inside day trades entirely within the previous session's high and low. Nothing new was learned; the market simply digested the prior bar. After a strong up day, that digestion without giving ground is a sign the buyers are still there.
Traders typically work the break of the inside bar's range, using the opposite side as the stop. The tighter the inside bar, the more precise that trigger becomes — which is why inside days and NR bars so often fire together.
A hammer sells off during the session and closes back near its high, leaving a long lower wick and a small body. It's the clearest single-bar picture of a failed decline: the sellers got their price and the buyers took it all back before the close.
We require the lower wick to be at least twice the body, the upper wick to be small, the close to sit in the top third of the range, and the bar itself to be a reasonable size relative to the stock's own recent ranges — so a directionless doji on a quiet microcap doesn't get flattered into a reversal signal.
The stock opens below yesterday's low — bad news, a weak overnight lead, a nervous seller — and then spends the day climbing back through it. Larry Williams named this one the Oops, after the sound made by everyone who sold the gap. It's a shakeout: the weak holders were flushed at the open and the stock took the price straight back.
We treat it as one pattern with two strengths, because that's what it is. Reclaiming yesterday's low is the trigger — that's the classic Oops, badged GDR. When the bar goes further and closes green at or above yesterday's close, the gap was rejected outright; we badge that stronger version GDR+. The second is always also the first, so reporting them as separate patterns would just count the same bar twice.
In an established uptrend this is one of the more useful shakeouts on the board. Out of an uptrend it's just a bounce, which is exactly why we show the moving-average context beside every signal.
A down bar is followed by an up bar whose body swallows it whole — opening at or below the prior close and finishing at or above the prior open. A full session of selling undone in one day.
Size matters here. We require the engulfing body to be meaningful against the stock's own average daily range, because a one-tick engulf of a one-tick body is noise wearing the costume of a reversal.
A heavy down day, and then the market opens above the whole of it — above the high, not just the close — and never trades back into yesterday's range. Whatever changed, changed while the market was shut, and the participants who spent the previous session selling are now watching from underneath. The open itself is the statement of power; nothing later in the day has to confirm it.
It's the mirror image of the gap-down shakeout above. There, a gap against the holders gets bought back; here, a gap in their favour is never given back. The classical name comes from Stephen Bigalow's candlestick work, where the kicker is ranked among the strongest of all buy signals, and the setup has been popularised among momentum traders by Matt Caruso.
We scan for the strong form only: the prior bar must be a genuinely large down day measured against the stock's own recent bodies, the open must clear that bar's high outright, and the close must be green and in the upper half of the day's range. A gap above a tiny doji is just a gap.
These seven are the entry bars the traders using this site look for in a setup. They're not a closed list — every pattern here earns its place by being precisely definable from daily prices and useful in an uptrend.
If there's an entry bar that works for you and we don't scan for it, tell us how you define it. If it can be pinned down in open-high-low-close terms, we can test it across the whole ASX and add it to the screen.
Suggest a patternEvery one of these patterns fires dozens of times a day across the ASX, and most of those firings are meaningless. What separates a setup from a shape is where it happens. So each signal we store carries two pieces of context: which of the rising 50, 150 and 200-day moving averages the bar was sitting on, and how far above its 50-day average the stock was trading at the time.
The first tells you whether the bar marks a pullback into support inside an established advance. The second tells you whether there's room left to run or whether the move is already stretched. Filter the screen on those two and a list of hundreds becomes a list you can actually work through — and every signal also appears as a marker underneath the candles on the stock's own chart. Then apply the test this whole site is built around: relative strength. A setup bar on a stock leading the market — a high RS percentile, ideally in a leading theme — is a different proposition from the same bar on a laggard, and the rankings sit one click away from every signal.
A single daily bar — or a two-bar pair — whose shape says buyers just took control: an unusually narrow range, a bar trading entirely inside the previous day's range, a long lower wick, a reversal that opens below yesterday's low and closes back above it, or a bar that opens clear above the whole of a big down day. On its own each one is a coin flip. Read inside a strong trend, at a rising moving average, they mark the low-risk spot to act.
Seven: NR4 and NR7 (the narrowest range of the last four or seven bars), inside days, hammers, gap-down reversals (Larry Williams' Oops, with a stronger "full reversal" tier), bullish engulfing bars, and bullish kickers. Every ASX security is scanned after each close, and every signal is stored with the context it fired in.
No, and we don't present them as though they do. An entry bar is a trigger, not a thesis. The value comes from combining one with a stock already in an uptrend, showing strong relative strength, in a leading theme, pulling back to a rising moving average and not extended — which is why every signal on our screen carries its moving-average context and its extension bucket next to it.
Setup Bars are part of the Pro plan, alongside the VCP Model Book, the daily scanner, the trend gauges and the stage-analysis leadership map.
General information only, not financial advice —see full disclaimer.
Sign up free and explore the platform today. When you want the full toolkit, Trader and Pro are a click away — monthly billing, no lock-in, cancel anytime.
Sign Up FreeLogin