Symmetrical triangle

Continuation shape211 completed examples in the record

What the shape is

Two converging boundaries with no flat side. It indicates that a move is coming, not which way, so no hit rate is published for it. It is by far the most common formation in this dataset: 211 of the 661 found.

What followed it

HorizonExamplesTextbook directionMedian changeMiddle half
5 bars211no directional claim+0.19%-2.12% … +2.60%
10 bars211no directional claim+0.63%-2.77% … +4.26%
20 bars211no directional claim+3.88%-2.27% … +11.25%
60 bars210no directional claim+7.66%-2.94% … +18.05%

This shape indicates that a move is coming, not which way. Scoring it on whether price moved at all would read as near-perfect accuracy, so no rate is published; read the spread of outcomes instead.

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 bars30no directional claim+3.98%+0.52% … +8.23%
10 bars30no directional claim+5.43%-1.03% … +10.50%
20 bars30no directional claim+24.21%+8.67% … +51.40%
60 bars30no directional claim+57.32%+19.02% … +92.20%

Interval 4h

HorizonExamplesTextbook directionMedian changeMiddle half
5 bars181no directional claim-0.44%-2.56% … +1.67%
10 bars181no directional claim-0.16%-3.06% … +3.23%
20 bars181no directional claim+0.51%-4.09% … +4.60%
60 bars180no directional claim-0.61%-6.60% … +5.70%

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.

Symmetrical triangle in crypto: the measured record | Chart Intel