Bull flag

Continuation shape8 completed examples in the record

What the shape is

A steep advance followed by a shallow drift against it. Found eight times here — the striking median change on that row describes a handful of episodes and is not an estimate of anything.

What followed it

HorizonExamplesTextbook directionMedian changeMiddle half
5 bars8too few examples+9.32%+7.14% … +11.51%
10 bars8too few examples+7.68%+5.15% … +10.21%
20 bars8too few examples+9.21%+7.12% … +11.29%
60 bars8too few examples+18.13%+13.40% … +22.86%

10 instruments, 1d / 4h, 2017-08-17 to 2026-07-25 — 182,341 bars and 661 completed formations.

engine v1.0.0 · Record generated 2026-07-25

  • These figures describe past occurrences of the same shape. They are not a projection of this chart.
  • 661 formations is not a large sample, and the instruments are correlated USDT pairs, so the effective sample is smaller still.
  • Below 30 examples no rate is printed at all.
  • Changes are close-to-close and exclude fees, funding and slippage.
  • Medians and quartiles pooled across instruments are sample-weighted approximations, not exact pooled quantiles.
  • A formation is timed from the bar its break became observable, and every change is measured strictly after that bar.
  • Pooled across every instrument and both backtest timeframes.

The same shape, split by interval

Interval 1d

HorizonExamplesTextbook directionMedian changeMiddle half
5 bars2too few examples+6.98%+6.98% … +6.98%
10 bars2too few examples+2.20%+2.20% … +2.20%
20 bars2too few examples+0.31%+0.31% … +0.31%
60 bars2too few examples-6.51%-6.51% … -6.51%

Interval 4h

HorizonExamplesTextbook directionMedian changeMiddle half
5 bars6too few examples+10.11%+7.20% … +13.02%
10 bars6too few examples+9.51%+6.14% … +12.88%
20 bars6too few examples+12.17%+9.39% … +14.95%
60 bars6too few examples+26.34%+20.04% … +32.65%

The backtest covered the daily and 4-hour intervals only. Only one shape reaches the publication floor on the daily, against eight on the 4-hour — so every pooled rate above is in practice a 4-hour statistic. The console scans five intervals; the three not listed here have no historical record at all.

How it is detected

Formations are matched against swing pivots rather than raw bars, so a single spiky candle cannot create one. A pivot is committed only once price reverses by more than 2.5 times ATR(14), floored at 0.8% of price. A detection is reported only at confidence 0.72 or above — the library default, unmodified.

Bull flag in crypto: the measured record | Chart Intel