What it is
An inside bar is a candle whose entire range sits within the range of the bar before it (the "mother bar"). On a weekly chart, an inside bar means a full week of compression after a week of expansion. This playbook trades the break of the mother bar's high (in an uptrend) or low (in a downtrend) with a stop at the far end of the inside bar. It is a slow, low-maintenance setup that requires one look at the chart per week.
The logic
A weekly inside bar is a pause in a move at a scale where institutions operate. The mother bar's range marks the price zone where the market last did meaningful business; the inside week shows that neither buyers nor sellers had the urgency to leave it. The break of the mother bar is the resolution of that pause, and because the mother bar's high and low are visible on every weekly chart, the break triggers stops and systematic orders on a large scale.
On the other side are traders who sold the top of the mother bar as resistance during the inside week, and holders whose stops sit above it. When the trend resumes, they supply the breakout's first leg.
Setup rules
- Market: liquid stocks, ETFs, index futures and major forex pairs. The setup works on daily charts too, with far more noise.
- Timeframe: weekly chart for the pattern; daily chart for the entry.
- Trend conditions: price above a rising 30-week (roughly 150-day) moving average for longs; the mother bar closed in the top half of its range.
- Pattern conditions: the inside bar's range is less than 60 percent of the mother bar's range (tight compression); the inside week's volume is below the mother bar's.
- Volume on the break: the daily bar that closes above the mother bar should print at least 1.3x the 20-day average volume. A quiet break is more likely to be the false one, and the setup can be re-entered on a later, louder break if the first attempt fails inside the two-week window.
- Disqualifiers: the inside bar is the second or third consecutive inside bar (a range, not a pause); earnings during the next two weeks; the mother bar was a news gap.
Entry, stop, target
Enter on a daily close above the mother bar's high in the week following the inside bar. If the break does not occur within two weeks, cancel the setup. Stop at the inside bar's low. Target 1 is the mother bar's range projected from the breakout; target 2 is trailed on a weekly close below the 10-week moving average.
| Item | Level | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Mother bar | 60.00 to 66.00 | Range 6.00, closed 65.20 |
| Inside bar | 62.50 to 65.50 | Range 3.00, half the mother |
| Entry | 66.20 | Daily close above 66.00 |
| Stop | 62.40 | Inside bar low, risk 3.80 |
| Target 1 | 72.00 | Mother range projected, reward 5.80, 1.5R |
| Trailed exit | 10-week MA | Best trades run 4R or more over months |
The initial R:R is modest; the setup is designed to catch the occasional multi-month move. A tighter version uses the inside bar's midpoint as the stop, at the cost of a lower win rate.
Position sizing and risk
Weekly stops are wide, so positions are small and holding periods are long. Size at /tools/position-size and hold risk to 0.5 to 1 percent per trade. Because the trade can be open for months, the risk of an earnings gap or a market shock is real; the portfolio-level rules in /learn/risk-management apply, and a total exposure cap of 6 open weekly trades is a reasonable default.
What breaks it
- False breaks. A daily close above the mother bar followed by a reversal back inside within a few days is common, especially in indices. The rule "exit on a weekly close back inside the mother bar" reduces the damage from holding a failed break.
- Ranging markets. Consecutive inside bars and alternating breaks in each direction chew through capital. The trend filter is essential.
- Costs. Low; a handful of trades a year per instrument.
- Edge decay. Modest; the pattern is well-known, but slow patterns decay slower than fast ones because they cannot be arbitraged intraday.
- Patience. The setup's real failure mode is the trader, who watches a position for weeks and exits early or takes a daily-chart trade against it. See overtrading.
How to test it
Weekly inside bars are rare enough that a single instrument produces perhaps 5 to 10 qualifying setups a year. To reach a sample of 300, run the rules across a universe of 100 or more liquid instruments over 15 or more years. Record the outcome under your rules, along with the maximum favourable excursion over 12 weeks so that you can evaluate different trailing exits. Segment by trend strength (distance above the 30-week average) and by compression ratio. Then trade it on paper for a year, which is the minimum time needed to see enough signals.
Variations
- Daily inside bar with the same rules for shorter holds; more signals and noise.
- Inside-bar failure: if the break of one side fails and price breaks the other side, trade the second break, similar to failed-breakout-reversal.
- NR7 variant: the narrowest range of the last 7 bars instead of an inside bar; slightly more signals.
Further reading
candlestick, breakout, trend, moving-average, timeframe, fakeout, swing-trading, overtrading, r-multiple, sample-size.
Related playbooks: base-breakout, ema-pullback-trend, three-day-pullback, trend-following-200-day