Descending triangle
Continuation shape74 completed examples in the record
What the shape is
A flat lower boundary with falling highs above it. It resolves in its textbook direction more often than not at sixty bars, but with a median change of about a quarter of one percent — smaller than typical round-trip costs.
What followed it
| Horizon | Examples | Textbook direction | Median change | Middle half |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 bars | 73 | 49.3% at or below a coin flip | -0.31% | -1.98% … +1.77% |
| 10 bars | 73 | 50.7% | -1.24% | -2.78% … +1.97% |
| 20 bars | 73 | 50.7% | +0.17% | -2.88% … +3.28% |
| 60 bars | 73 | 57.5% | -0.28% | -5.26% … +4.76% |
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
| Horizon | Examples | Textbook direction | Median change | Middle half |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 bars | 5 | too few examples | +2.78% | +2.67% … +2.88% |
| 10 bars | 5 | too few examples | +9.92% | +8.42% … +11.42% |
| 20 bars | 5 | too few examples | +10.09% | +6.11% … +14.08% |
| 60 bars | 5 | too few examples | +13.04% | +8.81% … +17.26% |
Interval 4h
| Horizon | Examples | Textbook direction | Median change | Middle half |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 bars | 68 | 51.5% | -0.54% | -2.32% … +1.69% |
| 10 bars | 68 | 54.4% | -2.06% | -3.60% … +1.27% |
| 20 bars | 68 | 52.9% | -0.56% | -3.54% … +2.48% |
| 60 bars | 68 | 58.8% | -1.26% | -6.29% … +3.84% |
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.