What Is a Pin Bar in Forex? How to Spot It and Trade It, With a Worked Example

Short answer: A pin bar is a candle with a small body and one long wick, the tail, which is usually at least two to three times the body. It shows that price moved sharply and was pushed back before the close. A bullish pin bar has a long tail below, a bearish one a long tail above. Traders use it at support or resistance, with a stop beyond the tip of the tail. It is a signal of rejection, not a forecast.

A bullish pin bar at support with entry and stop marked. Illustration, October 2026.

How to recognise a pin bar

The pattern is a single candle. It has these features:

• A long wick (the tail) pointing toward the level price rejected.
• A small body, ideally at the opposite end of the candle from the tail.
• A short or absent wick on the other side.

A bullish pin bar has the tail pointing down, with the body near the top. A bearish pin bar has the tail pointing up, with the body near the bottom. The candle’s colour matters less than its shape. Strictness varies: some traders require the tail to be at least twice the body, others at least three times. Pick a rule, write it down and use it the same way each time.

A pin bar is a close relative of the hammer and shooting star, and shares ideas with the doji candle. The candlestick basics guide explains wicks and bodies.

What the pin bar says

The long tail shows price travelled in one direction during the candle and was then pushed back. A bullish pin bar at support means sellers drove price down, buyers stepped in and the close was near the high. Traders read this as rejection of the lower price. That is an interpretation of one candle. Price can return and break the same level next.

Location decides how useful it is

A pin bar in the middle of nowhere says little. It is usually discussed at a place where a reaction is plausible:

• At support or resistance. A bullish pin bar at a marked support level is the classic setup.
• After a pullback in a trend. A pin bar at the end of a pullback to a trend line, in the direction of the trend, is the form many beginners find easiest to judge.
• Not within noise. On a 5-minute chart, tails appear all the time and spreads take a big share of the range.

A worked trade

Invented numbers for illustration. On an AUD/USD daily chart, price has been rising and pulls back to a support level at 0.6500. Today’s candle opens at 0.6525, drops to 0.6460, then closes at 0.6530. The body is 5 pips (0.6525 to 0.6530) and the lower tail is 65 pips (0.6525 down to 0.6460), many times the body.

Item	Level	Comment
Entry (buy stop)	0.6535	5 pips above the pin bar high (0.6530)
Stop loss	0.6455	5 pips below the tail tip
Risk	80 pips	0.6535 minus 0.6455
Target	0.6695	160 pips, twice the risk
Reward to risk	2 to 1

The stop is wide because the tail is long. With a 1,500 USD account risking 1% (15 USD), an 80-pip stop calls for a small position, about 0.19 USD per pip. Use the lot size calculator for the actual lot size, and read position sizing for the method. If the stop makes the trade too small to be worth taking, skipping it is a valid choice.

Some traders enter at the close or on a retrace into the tail to get a tighter stop. That improves reward to risk but can miss the trade when price does not come back.

Why pin bars fail

• The level breaks. A support level can hold for a candle and break the next. See the fakeout page.
• Hindsight. Pin bars are easy to see on a finished chart. Many that looked like signals were followed by nothing, and those get forgotten.
• Tail too large for the stop. A 150-pip tail forces a stop that most small accounts cannot afford at a sensible risk.
• Spread and slippage. A buy stop above a fast market can fill worse than planned. See slippage.
• News. A pin bar printed during a data release is a reaction to the news, not to a level. Check the economic calendar.

We have no verified statistic for how often pin bars lead to the move traders expect, so treat any success rate quoted online with caution.

Pin bar and engulfing candle

A pin bar is one candle that shows rejection. An engulfing candle is a two-candle pattern in which the second candle’s body covers the first. Some traders wait for either one at the same level. Combining signals can filter some trades but also reduces how many you get.

Related candlestick patterns: the inverted hammer, three inside up and down and morning and evening stars.

Bottom line

A pin bar is a candle with a long tail and a small body that shows price was rejected. It matters most at a level or at the end of a pullback in a trend. Set the entry, the stop beyond the tail and the position size before you trade, and expect many to fail. Practise on a demo account first. Only risk money you can afford to lose. CFDs are complex, high-risk instruments.