A Pin Bar — short for “Pinocchio Bar” — is a single candle with a tiny body and a long wick. The wick tells a story: price was pushed hard in one direction, then rejected and forced back, closing near the open. The candle is named for the lie of the move — price looked like it was going one way before getting hauled back.
Pin bars are one of the most-traded price-action candles. They work because they show a clear failure of attempted continuation right at a level — the kind of failure that often precedes a reversal.
Two variants, both built the same way:
• Bullish pin: small body at the TOP of the candle, long lower wick (at least 2× the body length). Sellers pushed price down; buyers rejected and closed near the high. Looks for a long entry near support.
• Bearish pin: small body at the BOTTOM, long upper wick. Buyers pushed price up; sellers rejected and closed near the low. Looks for a short entry near resistance.
The colour of the body matters less than the shape. A bullish pin can be a small red body if the close is still well above the wick low — what matters is the rejection.
| Candle | Where it appears | Signal |
|---|---|---|
| Pin Bar (bullish) | At ANY support level, any timeframe | Rejection — long entry |
| Hammer | Specifically at the BOTTOM of a downtrend | Trend exhaustion — reversal |
| Pin Bar (bearish) | At ANY resistance level, any timeframe | Rejection — short entry |
| Shooting Star | Specifically at the TOP of an uptrend | Trend exhaustion — reversal |
The shapes are similar but the context differs. A hammer is a pin bar in a specific location (bottom of downtrend). A shooting star is a pin bar at the top of an uptrend. The pin bar concept is broader — any rejection candle at any level.
The pin bar compresses a lot of information into one bar:
• Direction of failed attempt — the wick tells you which side tried and lost.
• Strength of rejection — the longer the wick relative to the body, the more decisive the failure.
• Location context — the same shape at a major level is meaningful; in the middle of nowhere it’s noise.
The best pin bars happen at obvious levels: support/resistance, prior highs/lows, trendlines, moving averages. At a level, the pin is information. Without a level, it’s a wick.
Price approaches a support level after a pullback. The pin bar prints: lower wick punches into support, body closes back above. Sellers tried; buyers won. The next bar opens and continues higher — the rejection has been confirmed by follow-through.
Pin bars fail constantly. The most common failure: the pin prints at what looked like a level, the next bar reverses the pin (closing through its wick), and the “rejection” turns out to be a stop-hunt. Honour the stop. The pin’s stop is tight by design — if it fails, you take a small loss and move on.
The second failure: identifying pin bars in noise. Every long wick is not a pin bar. The body has to be small relative to the wick, AND the candle has to be at a level. Without both, it’s just a candle with a long wick.
Key insight: A pin bar without a level is a candle. A pin bar AT a level is a setup. The candle pattern is the trigger; the level provides the context. Trade the combination, not the candle alone — most retail traders ignore the second half and wonder why their pin-bar strategy doesn’t work.
Pin bars are over-identified in retrospect. After the fact, almost any decisive reversal looks like it started on a pin. In real time, the strict version (body < 1/3 the candle’s range, wick 2x+ the body) is much rarer than online content suggests. Be strict on identification — the strict version works; the loose version is randomness with a name.