What is the right data type to store only -1 0 and 1 in postgres column?

If you want to save space, you can use the "char" data type. It stores a single byte.

you can cast integer or text to "char":

SELECT 'u'::"char", 'd'::"char", 'n'::"char";

 char | char | char 
------+------+------
 u    | d    | n
(1 row)

An enum uses 4 bytes since it is internally stored as a real.

What you are out to save space, you'll have to take alignment into account. The values are always aligned according to the type alignment. For example, a bigint always has to start at an address that is divisible by 8.

Now if your table is defined as

CREATE TABLE (
   smallflag "char",
   largenum  bigint
);

there will be 7 padding bytes between the columns, which would render all the space gains from "char" moot.

So place your table columns carefully.

A bit of a hack, but is you make the column nullable you can still use a bool, with a null value as the third value.

Boolean still uses 1 byte in Postgres, though.