Chart pattern · Reversal · Bearish
What is it, in one line
Two rising trendlines that converge, with price making higher highs and higher lows at a narrowing rate.
Bearish · Reversal · verdict: Traditional claim, not yet measured here
Two rising trendlines that converge, with price making higher highs and higher lows at a narrowing rate.
Method
Conventional target: A downside break projects a decline back to the wedge’s starting point.
Invalidated by: A close back above the upper trendline invalidates the pattern.
Both the last two swing highs and the last two swing lows are rising, but the advance in the lows exceeds the advance in the highs, so the wedge converges upward.
The traditional claim
Read as a bearish reversal despite rising price — the tradition treats the narrowing as buying exhausting.
How this detection is wrong
Convergence is the whole pattern. Rising highs and rising lows WITHOUT it is simply an uptrend, and a rule that omits the comparison labels every uptrend a wedge.
Published so the count can be reproduced. Every figure below is a parameter of the rule, not a preference: change one and the occurrence count changes with it.
| Parameter | Meaning | Default |
|---|---|---|
| pivotLeft | bars to the left of a swing | 3 |
| pivotRight | bars to the right before a swing is confirmed | 3 |
| lookback | bars searched for the swings | 120 |
| atrPeriod | bars of ATR used to size everything below | 14 |
| flatTol | how level two points must be | 0.02 |
| minSepAtr | separation required between swings, in ATR | 1 |
These share enough geometry that a detector can return more than one of them on the same bar. The engine reports every match rather than picking a winner.
Every pair on the site that can be mistaken for another, and what separates each: the look-alikes index.
Both the last two swing highs and the last two swing lows are rising, but the advance in the lows exceeds the advance in the highs, so the wedge converges upward. The detector also requires a prior uptrend, so the same shape in the wrong context is not counted.
It is read as bearish. Read as a bearish reversal despite rising price — the tradition treats the narrowing as buying exhausting.
Convergence is the whole pattern. Rising highs and rising lows WITHOUT it is simply an uptrend, and a rule that omits the comparison labels every uptrend a wedge.
As an executable rule over open, high, low and close, with 6 named parameters — including bars to the left of a swing 3, bars to the right before a swing is confirmed 3, bars searched for the swings 120 — all published on this page so the count can be reproduced. Strict and loose variants are defined as well, so the sensitivity of the count to those thresholds is visible rather than assumed.
Measurement pending re-run
No hit rate is published here yet. The run that would supply one was computed on engine ca6d9e36c81c; the engine is now cfb08765de7c. Its candlestick rows included the still-forming bar, and it predates the chart formations entirely, so those figures have been withdrawn rather than published with a caveat. The definition above is unaffected: it is what the detector tests, and no re-run changes it.
Same shape, opposite reading
The shapes are close, and the prior trend is what decides which one fired: this rule requires a preceding uptrend, its mirror a preceding downtrend.
Falling Wedge: Highs and lows both falling, with the highs falling faster so the range narrows.