An inside bar is a candle whose entire range fits inside the previous candle’s range — the market compressing after a move, with that previous candle (the "mother bar") marking the boundaries that matter. The breakout version of the trade is old and simple: when price finally leaves the mother bar’s range, go with the break, betting that compression resolves into expansion.
Simple to describe is not the same as pinned down. Does a tie at the high still count? If three inside bars stack up, which one is the mother? Do you trade the break of the inside bar’s range or the mother’s? Stop orders through the level, or a close beyond it? Every published "inside bar strategy" answers these differently — usually without saying so. Below are the exact rules we will run, and the honest status: inside-bar detection is not yet a primitive in our engine, so the 12-month results publish here the moment it ships, produced by the same deterministic engine and the same real data as every other number on this site.
The exact rules we’ll test
- Inside bar: a candle whose full range sits strictly inside the prior candle’s range — high below the mother bar’s high AND low above the mother bar’s low (ties do not count; that choice is pinned, not assumed).
- The setup arms when the inside bar closes; the levels that matter are the MOTHER bar’s high and low, not the inside bar’s.
- Long on the first close above the mother-bar high; short on the first close below the mother-bar low; the setup cancels if neither side triggers within 5 bars.
- Stop at the opposite end of the mother bar; target 2R; planned timeframe: 1-hour candles, 24/7.
- Risk 1% of equity per trade; 0.05% commission per side; 10× max notional leverage.
- Missing primitive: inside-bar detection with armed-breakout-and-cancel semantics is not yet supported by the engine — results publish here the moment it ships.
Backtest data: in the queue
We publish only numbers our own deterministic engine produced on real data — no borrowed or estimated stats. This setup needs a detection primitive the engine doesn’t ship yet, so its 12-month results will appear here the moment that lands. The strategies with completed research are on the strategies hub, and you can already practice this setup bar-by-bar in the free replay demo.
Why "inside bar strategy" results never agree
The pattern hides more definitional forks than any two-candle setup should: whether ties at the high or low count (≤ versus <), what happens when inside bars nest (is the mother the original wide candle or the latest one?), whether the breakout level is the inside bar’s range or the mother’s, whether entry is a stop order through the level or a confirmed close beyond it, and whether an un-triggered setup expires. Each fork produces a different trade list from the same chart — so two articles can both "backtest the inside bar" and share barely a trade.
Timeframe is the quiet variable on top. Daily inside bars are rare, widely watched events; 5-minute inside bars appear constantly and are mostly noise, because lower-timeframe candles overlap naturally. Discretionary traders patch this with context filters — only trade breaks aligned with an EMA-defined trend, only after a strong directional leg, only when the mother bar is itself a meaningful candle rather than doji-on-doji compression. All of that is testable as variants, but only after the unfiltered baseline exists — which is exactly what our queued run will publish.
How to backtest the inside bar breakout on Secuora
You can build a real sample by hand today, with a supported automated control to compare against:
- Open the free replay demo at /backtest/demo (no sign-up — it replays real BTC data) and set the timeframe to 1h to match the planned run.
- Step through the chart bar by bar; each time a candle closes fully inside the prior candle’s range, box the mother bar’s high and low with the drawing tools.
- Sign up free and trade the first close beyond the mother bar in the replay terminal — simulated stop-loss and take-profit orders, stop at the opposite end, 2R target — skipping the setup if nothing triggers within 5 bars.
- In the AI backtester at /backtest/ai, run the nearest supported primitive — the N-bar breakout — as your control: if inside-bar entries cannot beat a plain breakout of the recent range, the pattern added nothing.
- Journal the sample (rules, confluences, screenshots) and compare expectancy against the control after at least 30 replayed setups; the results table lands on this page automatically when the primitive ships.
Frequently asked questions
What is an inside bar?
A candle whose entire high-to-low range sits within the range of the candle before it — that wider previous candle is called the mother bar. The pattern marks compression: neither side managed to push price outside the prior period’s extremes. The common trade is the breakout of the mother bar’s range.
Do you trade the break of the inside bar or the mother bar?
Both versions exist in the wild, and articles rarely say which they use. We pin the mother bar, because the inside bar’s own range is by definition narrow and breaks of it trigger constantly on noise. Whichever you choose, choose it before testing — switching definitions mid-sample is how backtests quietly lie.
What win rate does the inside bar strategy have?
We do not publish a number yet: inside-bar detection is not a primitive in our engine, and we only publish statistics our own engine produced on real data. The 12-month run is queued and its results appear on this page when the primitive ships. Until then, treat any quoted inside-bar win rate that does not state its exact entry, tie and nesting rules as unverifiable.
What timeframe is best for inside bars?
There is a real trade-off rather than a best answer: higher timeframes produce rare, cleaner, more-watched inside bars; lower timeframes produce them constantly with far more noise. The honest approach is to pin one rule set and test it per timeframe instead of trusting a default — which is exactly what the replay demo and the queued engine run are for.