An invented price line: highs that stop at the same level while the lows between them climb, and then a rise through that level, outlined by a flat line across the highs, a rising line under the lows and the height of the triangle at its widest.
An invented chart, drawn to show the shape of an ascending triangle. Not market data.
Also searched asascending triangle chart pattern · rising triangle · flat top triangle · bullish triangle
How to recognise an ascending triangle
- At least two highs at about the same price.
- At least two lows, each higher than the last.
- The swings get smaller as the two lines approach each other.
- Textbooks place it most often within a rise, but it is drawn in other places too.
What it is taken to mean
It is read as buyers becoming more willing while sellers stay at one price. Each dip is bought sooner. Traders take a close above the flat line as the sellers at that level having been used up. A close below the rising line is taken the other way.
That is a reading, and no more. A pattern is a description of what a price did, not a forecast of what it will do. Textbooks file this one under “continuation shapes”, which is a habit of naming and not a rule the market keeps.
How it is conventionally measured
The textbook measure is the height of the triangle at its widest, taken up from the flat line. It is a convention for describing the shape and not a prediction.
What traders check
- How many times each line has been touched. Two touches make a line; they do not make it meaningful.
- Which line the price has closed beyond.
- How far along the triangle the price is. Textbooks say little about a price that drifts out of the point.
Where people go wrong
- Assuming it must break upward. It is classed as bullish, and it breaks downward often enough.
- Reacting to a wick through the line instead of a close.
- Redrawing the rising line after each new low so that the triangle survives.
On a real chart
Textbook shapes are rare. A real chart is ambiguous: the peaks are uneven, the lines can be drawn two or three ways, and the same candles are an ascending triangle to one reader and something else to another. Most shapes are also recognised only once they are finished, which is after the move they are said to announce has begun.
The picture on this page is invented. It was drawn by hand to show the shape as plainly as possible, with every awkward detail left out. It is not market data and it records nothing that happened.
Questions people ask
- Is an ascending triangle bullish?
- It is classed as bullish, because the lows are rising against a fixed ceiling. The class describes the drawing. The price can leave the triangle on either side.
- What is the difference between ascending and descending triangles?
- An ascending triangle has a flat top and rising lows. A descending triangle has a flat bottom and falling highs. One is the other turned over.
- Does an ascending triangle predict a breakout upward?
- No. It describes what a price did while the shape formed. Published studies of chart patterns disagree about whether they tell anything about the next move, and the tidy examples in textbooks were chosen afterwards, when the outcome was known. It is one observation to weigh with others.
The words on this page
An explanation for study. It is not advice, a recommendation or a forecast, and a pattern described here says nothing certain about what a price will do next.