Inverse head and shoulders
Reversal shape15 completed examples in the record
What the shape is
Three troughs with the middle one lowest, the mirror of head and shoulders. Also found fifteen times — frequently quoted elsewhere with a high success rate, and not measurable at this sample size.
What followed it
| Horizon | Examples | Textbook direction | Median change | Middle half |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 bars | 14 | too few examples | +4.46% | +1.76% … +7.35% |
| 10 bars | 14 | too few examples | +1.48% | -0.97% … +4.51% |
| 20 bars | 14 | too few examples | +0.91% | -1.32% … +3.22% |
| 60 bars | 14 | too few examples | +9.55% | +4.30% … +14.20% |
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 | 3 | too few examples | +0.42% | +0.42% … +0.42% |
| 10 bars | 3 | too few examples | -1.41% | -1.41% … -1.41% |
| 20 bars | 3 | too few examples | -4.11% | -4.11% … -4.11% |
| 60 bars | 3 | too few examples | +23.90% | +23.90% … +23.90% |
Interval 4h
| Horizon | Examples | Textbook direction | Median change | Middle half |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 bars | 11 | too few examples | +5.56% | +2.13% … +9.24% |
| 10 bars | 11 | too few examples | +2.26% | -0.85% … +6.13% |
| 20 bars | 11 | too few examples | +2.27% | -0.56% … +5.22% |
| 60 bars | 11 | too few examples | +5.64% | -1.04% … +11.55% |
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.