Chart School · the pattern library

Chart patterns

16 classic shapes, one page each. Every page draws the shape, then its outline, and says what it is, how it is recognised, what it is taken to mean and where people go wrong. None of them says what to do.

Before the shapes

A description, not a forecast
A pattern is a name for what a price did. It records where a move stopped, paused or narrowed. It does not say what the price will do next.
Textbook shapes are rare
Real charts are ambiguous. The same candles can be drawn as two different shapes, and the neat examples in books were picked out afterwards.
Every picture is invented
The lines on these pages were drawn by hand to show a shape as clearly as possible. None of them is a market, a price or a record of anything.

Reversal shapes

Shapes drawn where a move ended.

Each is named for a turn: a rise that became a fall, or a fall that became a rise. The name is given afterwards. While the shape is forming, nobody knows that it is one.

Continuation shapes

Shapes drawn where a move paused.

Each is a rest within a larger move, by its textbook description. A pause can also be the start of a turn, and the pages say so.

Either way

Shapes with no direction of their own.

A triangle, a range and the two wedges are read by the side on which the price leaves them, or by where they appear. Until then they say only that the swings have changed.

The groups follow the usual textbook classes. A class is a habit of naming, not a rule the market keeps: shapes classed as continuations turn, and shapes classed as reversals fail.

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