Chart Patterns: The Main Types, the Line Each One Breaks, and 356 Real Breaks Tested

Michael Whitman · Trading since 2017, full-time since 2020 · YouTube creator, 137K subscribers · Published 2026-09-05 · Updated 2026-11-02 · Reviewed 2026-11-01

Covered on this page: TradingView.

A chart pattern is a named shape in price, such as a double top, a flag or a triangle, that only counts once price closes through a support or resistance line drawn from it. On 33 years of real bars, the textbook target after a double-top break came about as often as the same move did from any ordinary day.

The three families, and the line each one breaks

Guides list anything from eleven patterns to more than seventy-five. They sort into three families, and every one of them ends at a single line. Learn the line and the name matters much less.

A reversal pattern claims the direction is changing; a continuation pattern claims a pause. Bilateral shapes make no claim until they break. The named chart patterns page writes each one as a condition you could check, with thresholds.

How it forms

A double top is price reaching the same high twice and failing both times. That is the shape, and on its own it is not tradeable — plenty of charts do this and carry on upward.

What makes it a pattern is the neckline — the low between the two peaks. Until price closes below that, there is no double top, only two highs.

That is the same chart described as two levels: a level tested twice and held, and a second level below that broke. The shape is a way of talking about the levels; the levels are what price is actually reacting to.

A flag is a strong move and a tight pause. Underneath: a pullback that held, inside a trend. A triangle is a range that narrows. Underneath: compression, and the expansion that follows it, the same idea as the quiet-then-loud section on the price action page.

Since 1993, SPY days at two times their 14-day average range were followed by another such day within five sessions 34.44% of the time, according to range expansion.

Ask which family you are looking at before you ask what it is called. A shape that agrees with the market structure around it is a different proposition from one betting against it.

The measured move

Project the pattern’s height from the break as a target. For a double top that is the distance from the higher peak down to the neckline, subtracted again below the neckline. All three of the top-ranked guides we read teach it. It gives you a number before you enter, and the measured move page takes the idea apart; the data below asks how often price actually got there.

A worked example

SPY, January to April 2026

SPY printed a high of $697.84 on 28 January 2026 and $697.14 on 11 February, 0.10% apart. The lowest low between them was $675.79 on 5 February. That is the neckline.

On 6 March SPY closed at $672.38, below the line, sixteen trading days after the second peak. The height was $697.84 minus $675.79, or $22.05, so the measured move pointed to $675.79 minus $22.05, or $653.74.

A wait-and-see trader would have passed. On 9 March SPY closed at $678.27, back above the neckline, so the rule of waiting one or two sessions for the break to hold said no. SPY then closed below the target on 20 March and bottomed at a $631.97 close on 30 March.

Then it undid the whole thing. On 15 April SPY closed back above $697.84, the higher of the two tops, six weeks after the break. The stop that belonged above the neckline and the target from the measured move had to be decided on 6 March, as the entry and exit page argues.

The original data

Two equal highs on SPY, QQQ and IWM

We tested the double-top picture on every SPY daily bar from 29 January 1993 to 25 September 2026, using Yahoo Finance’s unadjusted high, low and close, then on QQQ from 10 March 1999 and IWM from 26 May 2000, both to 26 October 2026. The rules, fixed before counting:

• A peak is a day whose high is above the highs of the five days before and the five days after.
• A pair is two peaks in a row, at least ten trading days apart, with a dip of 3% or more from the lower peak to the neckline, the lowest low between them (245 pairs on SPY).
• Equal means the second peak is within 1% of the first (52 SPY pairs).
• Resolution is whichever comes first after the second peak: a close below the neckline, or a close above the higher peak.

Equal highs broke down no more often than a random walk would have. From the day the second peak was recognizable, 16 of 45 SPY equal pairs broke down (35.6%) against 42.5% for a random walk between the same two lines; QQQ 9 of 36 against 39.5%, IWM 17 of 39 against 39.4%. None of the gaps is outside chance (p = 0.37, 0.09 and 0.62). Every pair is in the SPY equal-high pairs table and the QQQ and IWM pairs file.

After the break: how often the target came first

Then we took every pair that did break, equal or not: 356 completed double-top shapes (106 on SPY, 117 on QQQ, 133 on IWM). From the close that went below the neckline, we asked which came first: a close at or below the measured-move target, or a close back above the higher top. 355 had resolved by the end of the data.

The target came first 146 times, 41.13%. That sounds like a coin flip slightly against you, and the comparison is what matters.

Two baselines frame it. A random walk with no drift, started at the same close between the same two lines, would reach the target first 52.55% of the time. But these funds rose over the period, so we also ran the same two distances from every fifth session of the same fund, pattern or not: the lower line came first 38.30% of the time. The break did a little better than an ordinary day and the gap is within chance (p = 0.28). The neckline break did not put the odds on the target’s side.

FOREX.com’s confirmation rule did not change that. Its guide says to wait one or two sessions after a break.

In 190 of the 356 breaks the next two closes also stayed below the neckline; those reached the target first 43.92% of the time against 37.95% for the rest. But the confirmed entry sat a median 0.24 pattern heights below the neckline, against 0.11 for the first close, and in 4 of them the target had already been hit by then. Counted from that later close, the 185 that still had a trade and resolved reached the target first 42.70% of the time, against 47.44% for the same two distances from any day of the same fund. Waiting bought a better-looking rate and paid for it in the entry.

Investopedia’s rule that longer, bigger patterns produce bigger moves did not show up either.

Patterns longer than the median 17 sessions between peaks reached the target first 37.89% of the time, shorter ones 43.81%. In the 63 sessions after the break, the longer ones closed a median 0.62 pattern heights below the neckline at their lowest, the shorter ones 0.80. Deeper patterns (a dip over the 5.09% median) fell further in percent, but less relative to their own height: 0.61 heights against 0.77, and 41.01% against 41.24% reached the target first.

A second source matches exactly. On Nasdaq’s daily history for the ten years to 26 October 2026, the same rules find the same 34 QQQ breaks and 40 IWM breaks as Yahoo’s data, on the same dates, with the same outcomes (the October 2026 IWM break is still open in both). Every break, its target and its outcome is in the double-top breaks file.

The limits: three US stock funds, daily bars, one definition of a peak, and a period in which all three mostly rose.

What the videos teach

Across our study of 24,971 trading videos, 287 have chart pattern in the title. The median one gets 2,307 views, 79% never pass 50,000, and the median length is 9.7 minutes.

That is one of the lowest medians measured for this glossary, below breakouts at 6,187 and far below trend lines at 61,260. Titles naming a double top number 54 with a median of 14,482 views; triangles 78 at 1,133.

When it fails

The pattern completes and does the opposite

Two touches of the same high is also what a level looks like just before it breaks. The double top and the breakout are the same picture until one of them resolves — and on SPY, 29 of 52 equal pairs resolved upward.

It was only a pattern once it finished

Every completed pattern is obvious and every incomplete one is ambiguous, and you can only ever act inside the second condition. Textbook pictures show finished patterns, chosen after the fact.

The break came back

The 2026 SPY example hit its target and still closed above its top six weeks later. Decide before the break where the pattern is wrong, as the false breakout page explains.

You are pattern-matching a random chart

Humans find shapes in noise reliably, and a six-candle double top on a five-minute chart is one almost nobody saw; size and timeframe matter. The level test is the defense: if you cannot name the line and what happens when it breaks, there is no trade in the shape.

Questions people ask

Do chart patterns really work in trading?

Not as forecasts in our tests. Equal highs broke down about as often as a random walk would allow, and after a double-top break the measured-move target came first 41.13% of the time, close to the 38.30% the same distances gave from any day. The line is useful for placing a stop; the name adds no edge we found.

What are the most successful chart patterns?

Neither test on this page beat its base rate. Lists of the most successful ones come from textbook statistics or from examples picked after the fact; ask for the sample, the rule and the base rate before trusting one.

What are the most common chart patterns?

Double tops and bottoms, head and shoulders, flags, pennants, triangles, wedges, rectangles and the cup and handle. On SPY’s daily chart since 1993, two five-bar peaks at least ten sessions apart with a 3% dip between them formed 245 times.

How do you confirm a double top?

With a close below the neckline, the lowest low between the two peaks. Before that close there are only two highs; on SPY, 29 of 52 equal pairs closed above the tops first.

What is a measured move target?

The pattern’s height projected from the break. In the 2026 SPY double top it pointed to $653.74; SPY closed below that, then closed back above $697.84 on 15 April.

Related

Support and resistance is what every pattern resolves to. Breakout is what the neckline break actually is, including why it fails so often. And trading range is what a double top is before it becomes one; to work one step by step, see how to trade a double top.

This page is educational, not financial advice. Test every idea on your own charts before risking money. Some links on this page earn a commission if you buy through them. It costs you nothing and it does not decide what appears here or in what order — how these pages are made is set out in our methodology.