What Is a Wedge and What Are Falling and Rising Wedge Patterns?

This breakdown triggers longs to panic sell as the downtrend forms. The first example shows a rising wedge that follows a strong uptrend and develops over an approximately three-month period. The true breakout is a bearish reversal, as expected for rising wedges, and comes on high trading volume.

The descending wedge is a reasonably reliable pattern and, if used correctly, can improve your trading outcomes. In terms of technicality – the breakout above the resistance trend line signals the end of the downtrend. As soon as the first candlestick is completed, the trader will enter a long position with a stop loss at the support line. A good take profit could be somewhere around the 38.2% or 50% Fibonacci levels.

What the Falling Wedge Indicates

The pattern consists of two trendiness which contract price leading to an apex and then a breakout appears. Rising Wedge – Bearish Reversal
The ascending reversal pattern is the rising wedge which… Wedge patterns have converging trend lines that come to an apex with a distinguishable upside or downside slant. It involves recognizing lower highs and lower lows while a security is in a downtrend. The aim is to identify a slowdown in the rate at which prices drop, suggesting a potential shift in trend direction. This Merk & Company (MRK) chart shows two falling wedges with plotted price targets.

Prices usually decline after breaking through the lower boundary line. As far as volumes are concerned, they keep on declining with each new price advance or wave up, indicating that the demand is weakening at the higher price level. In a bullish trend what seems to be a Rising Wedge may actually be a Flag or a Pennant (stepbrother of a wedge) requiring about 4 weeks to complete. Traders can look to the starting point of the descending wedge pattern and measure the vertical distance between support and resistance.

Spotting the Falling Wedge

However, since the equity is moving downwards, our rising wedge pattern implies trend continuation and the falling wedge pattern – trend reversal. It is a bullish pattern that starts wide at the top and contracts as prices move lower. This price action forms a cone that slopes down as the reaction highs and reaction lows converge. In contrast to symmetrical triangles, which have no definitive slope and no bias, falling wedges slope down and have a bullish bias.

• This means that traders can look for potential buying opportunities.
• Alternatively, to measure manually, use an arithmetic chart and plot the distance between the wedge’s broadest point.
• When a falling wedge occurs in an overall downtrend, it signals slowing downside momentum.
• The consolidation phase is used by the buyers to regroup and attract new buying interest, which will be used to defeat the bears and push the price action further higher.
• There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data.
• Mean Reversion Definition Reversion to the mean, or “mean reversion,” is just another way of describing a move in stock prices back to an average.

A spike in volume after it breaks out is a good sign that a bigger move is on the cards. Essentially, here you are hoping for a significant move beyond the support trendline for a rising wedge, or resistance for a falling one. In a falling wedge, both boundary lines slant down from left to right.

Rising and Falling Wedge Patterns: How to Trade Them

As a bullish descending wedge pattern, you should notice that volume is increasing as the stock puts in new lows. As this “effort” to push the stock downward increases along the lows, you’ll notice that the result of the price action is diminishing. Another notable characteristic of a falling wedge is that the upper resistance line tends to have a steeper descending angle than the lower support line. A falling wedge pattern can be invalidated if the price goes sideways instead of continuing to trend downwards. Additionally, the wedge is invalidated if the price breaks higher and lower than the wedge trendlines due to volatility. The main risk of trading falling wedges is that they can be difficult to predict precisely.

In the chart example above, the falling wedge ended up being a continuation pattern. This is because the overall trend was up to begin with, so when the price broke out of the wedge to the upside, the uptrend continued. In this case, the pullback within the uptrend took on a wedge shape. This means the price may break out of the wedge pattern and continue in the overall trend direction of the asset.

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The area of the wedge breakout then serves as a resistance line on a subsequent rally. Note that the volume on the bearish breakout is relatively low in this continuation move, although it is still higher than the trading volume in the days prior to the breakout. A falling wedge is essentially the exact opposite of a rising wedge. So it also often leads to breakouts – but while ascending wedges lead to bearish moves, downward ones lead to bullish moves. In a rising wedge, both boundary lines slant up from left to right. Although both lines point in the same direction, the lower line rises at a steeper angle than the upper one.

What is a Falling Wedge Pattern?

They can also be angled — for example, where there is a downtrend or uptrend and the price waves within the wedge are getting smaller. Today we will discuss one of the falling wedge stock pattern most popular continuation formations in trading – the rectangle pattern. How can something so basic as a rectangle be one of the most powerful chart formations?