An invented price line: swings that get smaller, with each high lower and each low higher, and then a rise out of the point, outlined by a falling 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 a symmetrical triangle. Not market data.
Also searched assymmetrical triangle chart pattern · coil · contracting triangle · triangle breakout
How to recognise a symmetrical triangle
- At least two lower highs and two higher lows.
- Two lines that converge, neither of them flat.
- Movement that gets quieter toward the point.
What it is taken to mean
It is read as agreement: buyers and sellers settling on a narrower and narrower range of prices. The shape has no direction of its own. Textbooks often call it a continuation of whatever move came before, but traders wait to see which line is broken on a close.
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 “either way”, 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, set off from the point where the price left it, in whichever direction that was. It is a convention and not a prediction.
What traders check
- Which line the price has closed beyond.
- How near the point the price is. A drift out of the very tip is given little weight.
- The direction of the move before the triangle, and of the larger trend.
Where people go wrong
- Guessing the direction in advance.
- Taking the first poke through a line as the break. In a narrowing range, false breaks are common.
- Drawing the lines through wicks on one side and closes on the other.
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 a symmetrical 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 a symmetrical triangle bullish or bearish?
- Neither. It is the one triangle with no lean of its own. It is given a direction only by the side on which the price leaves it.
- Why does volatility fall inside a triangle?
- Because the range between the highs and the lows is narrowing. That is what the two converging lines record.
- Does a symmetrical triangle predict a big move?
- 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.