WRB (Wide Range Bar) Explained + Strategy Backtested on 1,088 Trades Across 46 Markets

A WRB (Wide Range Bar) is a candle that stands out on the chart: its range is several times larger than that of the bars around it. In Price Action the body of such a candle is treated as a support or resistance zone — price often comes back to it, and the middle of the body is a place to enter a trade.

We tested this idea on historical data. In this article we explain what a WRB is, how to tell it from an ordinary big candle, and run the same rules on 46 markets — forex, gold, silver, indices and crypto — from 1999 to October 2026. The main result: WRB does not work on H4, and entering at the edge of the body loses money. The working strategy is on the daily chart, from the middle of the body, with the trend and a 3R target.

What is a WRB (Wide Range Bar)

A WRB is a candle whose range (High − Low) is much larger than the average range of the previous bars, with a body that takes up most of the candle. Behind such a bar there is a strong impulse: a big player bought or sold aggressively, important news came out, or the market broke a level.

Why does price come back to it? The impulse was too fast: many traders did not get in, and some large orders were left partly unfilled. When price pulls back into the WRB body, those orders meet it again — and the pullback often ends with a continuation in the direction of the impulse.

That is the theory. Below we check which of its rules work on historical data and which don’t.

Types of WRB: bullish and bearish

• Bullish WRB — a big green candle. Its body becomes a support zone: on a pullback to the middle of the body we look for a buy.
• Bearish WRB — a big red candle. Its body becomes a resistance zone: on a pullback to the middle of the body we look for a sell.

How to identify a WRB on the chart

«The bar catches your eye» is a bad rule: after a quiet market almost any candle looks big. We defined a WRB with two conditions that are easy to check:

• Width: the candle’s range (High − Low) is at least 2 times the average range of the previous 10 candles.
• Body: at least 60% of the range. A wide candle with a small body and long wicks is indecision, not an impulse.
• What comes before it: most often the 10 candles before the WRB form a narrow range, and the WRB breaks out of it in one move. But you don’t have to wait for a flat base — it is enough that the bar is 2× wider than average.

Which WRB rules actually work? The test

Textbooks trade WRB in different ways: on H4 or D1, from the middle of the body or from its edge (the open), with a width threshold of 1.5× or 2×. We tested these variants on the same 46 markets from 1999 to 2026, spread included.

What the table shows:

• H4 loses. On 4-hour candles there are too many «wide bars», and the spread eats the already weak edge.
• Entry at the open is a disaster. The stop behind the bar is tiny, the first wick knocks it out, and the spread takes a large part of the risk. This variant is often recommended as «aggressive» — on historical data it is the worst.
• Daily candles and the middle of the body work. Even simple rules on D1 are profitable. If you take only bars 2× wider and trade with the trend with a 3R target, the drawdown drops almost threefold (from −83R to −31R) and the profit factor rises from 1.11 to 1.29.

Does the bar width matter?

This is the key question: maybe it is not about WRB, but about any pullback to the middle of a strong candle? We kept all the rules the same and changed only the width condition.

The honest conclusion: most of the result comes from the entry itself — a pullback to the middle of a strong candle with the trend and a 3R target. It is profitable even on ordinary bars. The WRB ≥ 2× filter picks the best of these candles: the result per trade is higher and the drawdown is 3 times smaller. Bars that are too wide (3× and more) are worse — usually these are news spikes after which price reverses.

WRB strategy: the rules

There is no need to wait for a confirmation candle (pin bar, BOF). We tested an entry after a rejection candle at the middle of the body: +116.6R instead of +220.8R and a drawdown of −50.4R instead of −30.7R. While you wait for confirmation, price moves away from the level and the entry gets worse. The limit order is simpler and more profitable.

⬇ Read the strategy first — the indicator and Excel journal links are repeated at the end of the article

Statistics: 1,088 trades on 46 markets

We ran the rules on daily candles from 1999 to October 2026. Markets:

• Forex, 28 pairs: EURUSD, GBPUSD, USDJPY, USDCAD — since 1999; the other majors and crosses — since 2022–2024;
• metals: gold XAUUSD (since 2004), silver XAGUSD;
• indices and oil: NAS100, US500, GER40, Brent;
• crypto, 12 coins: BTC, ETH, SOL, XRP, BNB, LTC, ADA, DOGE, LINK, AVAX, DOT, TRX — since 2018–2020.

The conditions are strict:

• the spread is deducted from every trade: 1.5 pips on majors, 2.5 on crosses, $0.35 on gold, 0.1% of the price on crypto;
• if the stop is hit on the entry candle, we count a stop, and a target on the entry candle is not counted;
• the same rules for all markets; losing markets were not removed from the statistics.

What R means — in plain words

• Stop hit — minus 1R. Target hit — plus 3R.
• Example in money. Account $10,000, risk 1% = $100. So 1R = $100: a stop is −$100, a target is +$300.
• Into money: +11.5R for 2026 at $100 risk = +$1,150.

A pip of gold, the yen and bitcoin is worth different amounts, so the main unit in this article is R.

Key numbers

We checked robustness with neighbouring parameters: 2.5R and 3.5R targets, an 8- and 12-bar average, a 50% and 70% body, 1.8× and 2.2× width, EMA 100 and 150, an order valid for 20 and 40 candles. All 12 variants are profitable (from +120R to +268R). The result does not hang on one lucky setting.

Results by year

20 of 28 years were profitable. The last three years: 2024 — +29.7R (155 trades), 2025 — +25.9R (168), 2026 to October — +11.5R (99). The worst years were 2013 (−6.4R) and 2019 (−6.9R). Losing years are small: the strategy does not «fire» once a decade — it slowly builds up profit.

Results by market group

All four groups are profitable. The best markets: GBPUSD (+28.9R, 70 trades), USDCAD (+23.7R), ADA (+22.3R), EURUSD (+19.8R), ETH (+19.4R), gold (+18.6R, 56 trades), SOL (+18.5R). The worst are BNB (−9.0R), AUDJPY (−8.2R) and AUDUSD (−6.2R). 30 of 46 markets are profitable. We do not drop the losing ones: many of them have 5–10 trades, which is noise, and removing the «bad» ones in hindsight is curve fitting.

Buys and sells

Both sides are profitable: buys +135.8R (599 trades, 31% winners), sells +85.0R (489 trades, 31%).

The honest truth about the drawdown

With 31% winners, long losing streaks are unavoidable: the worst one is 21 stops in a row, the max drawdown is −30.7R. Less than half of the months are profitable (110 of 239): the money comes from rare 3R targets. On 46 markets up to 19 trades can be open at the same time, so keep the risk at 0.5% per trade, not 1–2%. Then the worst drawdown in history is about 15% of the account.

Trade examples step by step

The number in the corner is the trade number in the journal. How to read the chart: the violet box is the WRB body (the label shows how many times the bar is wider than average), the violet dashed line 50% is the middle of the body, the grey line is EMA 200, the blue line is the limit order, ENTRY is the candle where it was filled, the red zone is the stop, the green zone is the target.

Gold, buy: July 2024 — +3R

On 11 July gold prints a bullish WRB: the bar is 2× wider than average, and the close at 2414.29 is above EMA 200. Buy Limit at the middle of the body (2392.58), stop below the open (2370.37), 3R target (2459.21). The order is filled the next day, and on 16 July the target is hit: +$66.6 per ounce.

EURUSD, buy: April 2025 — +3R

On 3 April 2025, the day of the tariff panic, the euro prints a WRB 4.3 times wider than average. The pullback to the middle of the body (1.09445) comes on 4 April, stop 1.08320, the target 1.12820 is hit on 11 April: +337 pips.

GBPUSD, sell: December 2024 — +3R

On 18 December the pound drops with a bearish WRB below EMA 200. The Sell Limit at the middle of the body (1.26423) is filled on 19 December, stop above the open (1.27185), target 1.24135 — on 2 January: +229 pips.

USDJPY, sell: April 2025 — +3R

Bitcoin, sell: January 2026 — +3R

On 20 January bitcoin falls from 92,631 to 88,428 — a bearish WRB below EMA 200. Sell Limit 90,529, stop 92,675, target 84,092 — on 29 January. The stop on crypto is only ~2.4% of the price, while the target is more than 7%.

AUDUSD, buy: July 2026 — +3R

Ethereum, buy: August 2026 — +3R

A trade that takes patience: after the WRB on 21 August price moves sideways near the middle of the body for a month and reaches the target only on 21 September. The time exit is after 60 candles, so the trade made it in time.

Time exit: CADCHF, 2025

Price went in the right direction but did not reach the target in 60 candles. The trade was closed at market: +1.5R.

And this is what losses look like

More than two thirds of the trades are losers — with a 3R target this is normal. A typical loss: a few weeks later price comes back to the middle of the WRB, the order is filled, but the pullback does not end and goes further, beyond the bar’s open.

Gallery: all trades 2024–2026

Every trade of the last three years with a chart: market, date, side, result in R. Click a card to open the full chart and use the arrows to browse. The filters show only targets, only stops, one side or one year. All 1,088 trades since 1999 are in the Excel journal.

Table of trades 2024–2026

The same trades in one table: market, entry date, entry, stop, target and exit prices, result in R after spread. The table scrolls inside the box; the 📈 button opens the trade chart.